Negativity

When is it OK to just stop?

Stop what, you may ask? Anything. Everything. That group of things which are just pissing you off at this point.

In fandom there is this idea that (and I think I subscribe to it as well) where the longtime love affair you’ve had with comics (or just a singular title) has to come to an end.

Of course, this butts right up against something else. We’re also collectors. To have a title run continous for 20, 30, 40, or 50 years and then be so annoyed by a direction you contemplate dropping it… that is not just an innocent decision but one which must be agonized over.

I’ve written about my love for Spider-Man and how it was basically one of the first comics I ever bought back in 1986. From there until around 1998, I collected the book until all the Clone mess finally left me feeling a certain way. In combination with being a poor college student – the easy solution presented itself in dropping the books.

But it was never supposed to be a forever thing. Creative teams come and go. Editors and Editors-in-Chief come and go. At some point, I would have to come back, and in the end it was J. Michael Straczynski who brought me back. And then One More Day made me leave again.

That was my last straw. At the time, Spidey had been married almost 1/2 of his existence and now they were doing away with it.

And so it has been nearly 20 years where I haven’t bought a Spider-Man title.

Weirdly, now is the time I’m seeing a lot of Editors talking to fans online about if you don’t like something, then drop it. Which… I gotta say, is an odd way to sell more copies of your comic. I’m sure they get tired of the same questions over and over again. Maybe that’s why they say it.

Either way, I would think you’d want to say something a bit more encouraging. Hey, if you don’t like this, you’re in luck because we have a married Peter Parker in the pages of Ultimate Spider-man!

***

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The whole reason I’ve even been thinking about this is due to a conversation with a friend. He is a longtime comic reader (going back to the 70). And very much a Marvel guy than anything else (back in the day they would have called him a Marvel Zombie). That said, he would listen to my recommendations from time to time (Johns’ Flash run being a big one I can recall).

However, sometime after Endgame, I’m not 100% sure what exactly was his breaking point. Maybe it was being unable to watch the Black Widow movie because he didn’t have Disney+. Maybe it was slightly after that, but regardless he declared he was done with the Marvel movies/shows/etc.

And that’s his perogative. I’m certainly not the MCU “Must Watch” police by any means, but what I found interesting is more that he allows himself to be… convinced isn’t the right word, but we’ll go with it… convinced he’s right by only reading the reviews of the movies and shows he’s purposefully not watching.

It’s another oddity to KNOW something sucks that you never ever watched in the first place. And at the same time, we all do this based on trailers or reviews in general. Making decisions on something you’re not planning on seeing.

However, what I think bothers me about his exile from the MCU is that when I tell him a certain show or movie was actually decent or (gasp!) good, he just dismisses me. It’s like he’s more willing to believe total strangers than someone he’s been friends with for 25 years.

And even that, I could probably handle, but then he wants to try and point out flaws in things he never saw to someone who did see them. That not only seems crazy, but I’m not sure that’s how it should work.

***

Which brings me back to Negativity. And Fandom.

I think if we are only ever focused on the things which piss us off… if we only rant and rave about things that suck… then all we are doing is feeding more of that into the world. Instead, maybe we should take those editors’ advice and just let go. Drop the book. Don’t watch the movie or show. Don’t read reviews.

Just disconnect.

At least for a little while. Because like I said above, the creative teams and editors won’t be there forever. If you close yourself off to everything, then you may miss out on something great.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

A Reset… Question Mark?

Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay

2025 has kinda done a number on the McGuire household.

We had such dreams and aspirations like so many others who look to the new year as a new start on things. Not that things were bad or anything in 2024, but more of that feeling of getting off to a good start right out of the gate. Maybe get back to the gym. Maybe figure out some better work-life balance.

Maybe… maybe…maybe…

On January 1, Courtney starting to get a pain in her side. She’d actually had a similar pain about a month earlier and thought it might be a kidney stone. The doctors gave her something for the pain and if it was an infection – it would knock it out. One month later, on the way back from Virginia, after an 8 hour drive had turned into a 10+ hour drive due to I-85 being shut down in South Carolina, she looks at me and says

“We need to go to the Emergency Room, I’m in really bad pain.”

Turns out it was kidney stone.

One she would have to deal with for basically the next 3 weeks as she had doctor visits, trying to deal with the pain when the medicines wore off.

One of our friends is a nurse and he said that on the pain scale it is basically heart attack, gunshot, and then only slightly below that is kidney stone. From watching my wife during January, I believe it.

After the surgery, there was some pain as they weren’t able to get the full stone, so the remnants still had to clear. But it seemed that the worst was behind us. We decided to say that Feb. 1 would actually be the start of 2025. We were going to get that reset and get started on the new year properly!

February was my turn. I somehow had 5 projects due in 4 weeks, which meant a ton of days where I went from work, got home, ate dinner, maybe watched one tv show, and then back to work until after midnight.

Writing related activities were put on hold. Pretty much anything other than work was put on hold.

The light at the end of the tunnel was literally February 28 at 6 PM. That would be the last day of work before we went on a Cruise. It was a perfect break from the grind, and after that week we would reset and 2025 would start when we got home.

And that was the plan, except on the way back from the Cruise I started to feel under the weather and by the time we were home I had the Flu. Which knocked me on my butt for about 3 or 4 days.

Then as I was feeling better, Courtney started getting sick.

Fine! Whatever! 2025 will start over on St. Patricks Day. We don’t drink, but 2025 was trying to get us to start.

Tuesday, March 18 I get a flat on the way home from work. Ontop of that, I realize that my donut spare is low on air. AAA takes 3+ hours to get someone to me so Courtney ends up coming to get me, we get air in the tire, and get the thing changed… not getting home until after 10 PM.

2025 – you magnificent bastard. You keep getting us like an April Fools Day that will never end.

So, do I dare say it? 2025 is going to start… NOW!

Question Mark?

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost – The One Where I Don’t Get Sea Sick On My Very First Cruise

In an odd sequence of events, last year I wrote about my very first cruise and the real fight against getting motion sick. Two weeks ago, my wife and I went on another cruise and while I again managed not to worry about getting motion sick, I came home with the Flu. Instead of talking about the trip, I’m still playing catch up on things after being out of it for the week. So enjoy the flashback…

***

Image by Gianluca from Pixabay

When I was about 14 years old my family went to Destin, Florida for a week. Well, technically we did that pretty much every year. When we first started going there in the early 90s there were only a handful of places to stay, even fewer things to do (you generally had to go across the bridge to Fort Walton), and that was probably for the best for my parents and their three kids. However, during this particular year, my grandmother had come to stay with us as well.

Now Nanny loved to fish. I honestly think had she lived on the coast she would have done it from sun up to sun down. So we were definitely going to do some fishing activity while we were down there, and so my parents decided to book us all on a 4 hour deep sea fishing excursion.

Side note – I get motion sick in cars. It’s not nausea though. Instead, I get bad headaches. Weirdly, I don’t get them if I’m driving, and I don’t get them if I’m in the passenger seat. Otherwise, life becomes a bit of pain. Which made family trips all sorts of fun as I couldn’t read to pass the time. At best I could listen to music with headphones on or just try to zone out.

I load up on the boat. This thing likely could hold maybe 30 people. Everyone would have a spot on the rail where they could fish until their hearts desire was full. And there I was, right beside Nanny, ready for the boat to get to the fishing spot and catch all sorts of things.

Image by gwiseman from Pixabay

The trip out there was probably 15 minutes and wasn’t too bad. Though, I felt the very beginnings of a headache, that would likely go away once the boat stopped.

Once the boat stopped moving.

On a moving ocean…

Oh, crap, the boat is never going to stop rocking, is it?

What occurred next I can only (luckily) remember through a haze of blinding pain as I spent the next 4ish hours in the middle of the boat on a cot, writhing and moaning. Because, the only thing that might make things worse would be if there was a storm out at sea. You know, where the boat gets tossed around a little bit (nothing scary, but more than I could possibly deal with).

When we finally reached land, I may have kissed the ground. And every year after, my parents would make the joke about booking another deep sea fishing excursion.

***

Image by Took A Snap from Pixabay

Now, I told you that story, so that I could tell you this story…

My wife and I were married back in 2002, and for our Honeymoon we were gifted a Mediterrean Cruise. We’d fly into Barcelona the morning of departure, and then it would be a week visiting various ports throughout France, Italy, and Malta. I was really looking forward to the opportunity, but my previous “boat” experience weighed on my mind. So I went and got the motion sick patch from a doctor. If you are unfamiliar, you stick it right behind your ear, and it is supposed to help with motion sickness. In addition, my dad mention a bracelet that he’d worn on a cruise which was based on pressure points along your wrist which apparently helped with the symptoms. Finally, I had old faithful, Dramamine to get me through any of the worst of it.

The flight to Barcelona was overnight, and since it was far and away the longest flight I’d ever been on, I made sure to take my Dramamine when I got on the place so that I could sleep. But, sleep on a plane is a sporatic thing for me, so I’m not sure how much rest I actually got.

Once we landed in Spain, it was early morning, and we hurried to the port in order to begin boarding. Somewhere along the way I slipped on the bracelet and put my patch on.

Getting onto the boat, the previous day’s trip, jet lag, and perhaps something else had completely wiped me out. I could barely function when we had to go to the muster stations, and by 3 or 4 when we were allowed to go back to our rooms, I pleaded with my new bride to let me sleep.

“Just give me today, and I’ll be good the rest of the week. I don’t know why I’m so tired, but I can’t…”

Luckily, she saw the poor, pitiful state I found myself in, and took pity… even though it meant missing some of the first evening activities (the big one being the first dinner). I think I finally woke up around 9ish, and when we started trying to figure out why I was so wiped and she wasn’t… we realized:

Dramamine

The Patch

The Bracelet

I’d over drugged myself!

I took the bracelet off. I didn’t take anymore Dramamine. I only used the patch. And the good news was that not only did I not need to sleep the trip away, I didn’t get sea sick!

***

I’m not sure if there is a less subtle message in all of this. Mostly, I felt like a dumbass, but I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the trip… I nearly messed up the trip in a different way. Which feels like a very “me” thing to do.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

A Love for Everyday – Part 17

Eight years ago, I created a homemade book for my wife with all these quotes about Love from our favorite TV Shows and movies and books, and then I added to it great quotes about love from history or just great quotes about love from anyone. For the past seven years, I’ve shared a few from the book around the holidays.

 

January 9

What I really want to do with my life – what I want to do for a living –  is I want to be with your daughter.

I’m good at it.

Say Anything

 

February 14

Do I love you?

My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

 

March 17

But the heart’s not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love

Her

 

April 24

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep;

The more I give to thee,

The more I have,

For both are infinite.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 

May 25

When love feels like magic, you call it destiny.

When destiny has a sense of humor, you call it serendipity.

Serendipity

 

June 8

If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.

George Orwell, 1984

 

July 7

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

 

August 8

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

Winston Churchill

 

September 12

We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other one wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.

But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 earthly reason for my existence.

I love you very much.

Johnny Cash

 

October 9

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

John Lennon

 

November 15

Don’t you understand? You mean more to me than anything in this whole world.

Peter Pan

 

December 21

Maybe you’ll fall in love with me all over again.

Ernest Hemingway

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Main Character Syndrome

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The other day I was driving through a Publix parking lot when the car in front of me stopped at the crosswalk just in front of the store. A couple of customers used this break in traffic to get into the store or get to their vehicles. Then once the way was clear, I waited patiently for them to continue on as well.

They didn’t move.

15 seconds passed. Still no movement.

At around 30 seconds, they turned their hazards on to indicate they weren’t going anywhere. Then another 20-30 seconds later, finally the passenger exited the vehicle. All told it was probably a minute and a half from when they initially stopped to when they began moving again. But aside from some cursing from me, I couldn’t figure out what the passenger was doing that whole time. They knew there was a line of cars developing behind them but clearly weren’t in any rush to exit their own.

It was as if they didn’t care how they impacted anyone else as long as they weren’t inconvienced by having to walk more than a few steps from the front door.

***

This really bugs me because I abhore waiting outside the grocery store for my wife to “run in and get a couple of items”. I won’t do it (and she hates this about me). I would rather drop her off (quickly and efficiently), find a parking spot, and then when she exits the building, go an pick her up (again, quickly and efficiently). Barring the parking, if it is really going to be quick, I will drive around the building/parking lot a few times until she reappears.

Anything to not mess with anyone else’s day.

Image by Tung Lam from Pixabay

***

People who constantly back their cars and trucks into parking spots. I get why they do it, when they are ready to go, pulling out is much easier than backing out. A case could easily be made that there is a lower likelyhood of accidents from the action. All of that is good and well…

Except, when there are other cars trying to get passed you in a parking lot or parking deck.

You see, the backing in part ALWAYS takes longer than you just pulling in. Which means I’m forced to live on your schedule. You’ve impacted my time because you’ve designated that your time is more valuable than my time.

It drives me crazy.

***

I was ranting about these things the other day and realized both were really cases of Main Character Syndrome.

You know when you watch a show or movie or read a book, we’re following the main character(s). They are the most important people to the story, and it is no stretch to say there would be no story without them. We might care about secondary or tertiary characters, but that is normally through the lens of how they interact with the Main Characters. How will those smaller actions impact the overall PLOT.

That’s what these types of things are for me. These people who inconvience me (and you) are living their lives with no regard to anyone else. However, the second part of this is an odd one.

I don’t think these people are “bad people”.

If they block you in or delay you, it’s not because they are assholes. It’s because they legitimately can’t see that anyone else could ever be affected by them. We are simply background characters within their larger story. Likely never to cross their paths again.

The nameless and faceless masses.

***

I’m 100% sure we all do something throughout our daily lives where we give very little thought to how some seemingly minor action could have a negative consequence on someone else’s day. Because, we all likely have moments where we see ourselves as the Main Characters and not just random NPCs.

However, I’d like to hope that those moments are very rare for me. I really hope that I’m not the Main Character, but instead am someone who is a part of an ensemble. Maybe in a comedy series with a long life span on both network (or streaming) before eventually getting a syndication deal.

Though, that may not be too much better.

***

This one was half rant and half personal insight. It’s very rough, but it’s still in a raw form only recently bubbling to the surface. But it feels like a larger point could be made… I’m just not sure how to get there as of yet.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Turn the Page on 2024

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Much like nearly everyone else on the planet, I like to use the end of the year/beginning of the year to do a reset. Unlike a “resolution”, I prefer to look at it as a way to do a little reflection on what happened in the year before, mark the progress (or lack of progress) I made on certain projects, before turning to 2025 and setting a number of goals for myself.

 

In Our Dreams Awake

After a two year gap between issue 1 and issue 2, we successfully funded the second issue of In Our Dreams Awake. In addition, we completed issue 3 and are looking to launch that comic in early Spring. Finally, we have all the pencils and inks done and half the colors done on Issue 4. I’d hoped to get at least a second issue out in 2024, but ran out of time.

The Crossing

A little bit of tweaking to the project caused the need for a little bit of a rewrite of issue 2. The good news is I finished that up around the beginning of December, and Robert has started in on Issue 3 to help close out this first arc of the project!

Novels/Prose

No releases… but I have been writing/outlining/etc a ton of different things. I have been working on my Fantasyish series, a couple of short stories morphed into something more than I was expecting, and more and more I feel like I’m inching closer to a big series of releases.

Blog Posts

I posted something for 51/52 weeks of the year (only missing last week as I was on vacation). While I did use a few of the weeks to repost some oldies but goodies, I feel like there were a good assortment of Convention Reviews, Comic Reviews, Movie Reviews, Life stuff, and the other randomness my brain comes up with at 1 in the morning.

Social Media

The last quarter of the year I tried to expand my footprint in a couple of places: BlueSky and Instagram. I am far from a master at either, but little by little I’m hoping to find a way to get more eyeballs on the projects I’m releasing in the future.

The Look Ahead to 2025

In Our Dreams Awake

Issue #3’s Kickstarter and Release. As I wrote above, we are looking to launch in mid-March. Then my hope is to fulfill during the late Spring/Early Summer with an eye for a Fall release for Issue #4.

<Redacted Comic Title>

I’m in the process of securring an artist for my next comic book series. The biggest hurdle to anything a writer (or artist) does is having too large a delay between releases. While I have one potential solution for my prose writing that I’ll likely get into at some point closer to when my series is ready, for comic books I’m looking to go ahead and launch the next thing while the previous thing (In Our Dreams) is about to finish up. In an ideal world the schedule will look like this:

IODA #3 – March

<Redacted> #1 – June

IODA #4 – September

<Redacted> #2 – February 2026

Conventions

I need to do more conventions. That really is the beginning and end to it. I’d like to target one a quarter at least. Somewhere between 4-6 appearances seem like a doable goal for 2025.

Prose Work

I’ve said it many times, but it is just as true… others don’t see what the heck you’ve been working on until you actually release it. Just to give some insight into this, I currently have the following Prose pieces in the works:

Fantasy Series – 2 1/2 books written. These are in 2nd draft format. They will need at least one more self-editing pass before I get an editor to look at them.

Sci-fi/Romance – 2nd Draft written. One more pass before an editor.

Hollow Empire Novella(s) – 1 is ready for an editor. 1 is about 10%. The last one hasn’t been started.

I’m progressing over here. But with the series, I want to have the majority of it written before I release the first one.

So, I’m going to continue on, moving at my own snail’s pace until I get enough to unleash upon the world (cue evil laugh).

***

A few big swings for the upcoming year, a few attempts to collect some singles and doubles (can you tell I’m ready for baseball?), and a lot of excitement for the new year. I hope you’ll continue on the journey with me!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Repost – Reflections on Christmas Past

The Truth Hurts

My roommate in college had a great story from the holidays. He’d gotten a gift, a large box, not too heavy, but there was definitely some weight to it. He was young (probably 8 to 10 years old I believe), so while his spidey sense was there in regards to what the shape of the box might contain, this one didn’t trip any alarms. Finally, it was time, and he dove into this gift, tearing the wrapping paper asunder, he popped his fingers under the gaps in the box and ripped the tape… only to reveal clothes. Clothes, clothes, and more clothes. So he turned to the person the gift was from, and spoke (in a voice as loud as he could make it given his youth):

“Clothes AREN’T gifts!”

 

A Cruel Trick

Growing up a Jehovah’s Witness meant that a part of my family didn’t celebrate Christmas, but, because my parents were divorced, I still got gifts from my Aunt, Uncle, and grandparents. Which meant, I was making my own list of all the items I could never afford. And for much of my youth, that meant Transformers figures. You see, back in the day, they had two different-sized figures. The smaller ones (like Bubblebee) were around $5 or $6 (if I’m remembering correctly). They were just the right amount that maybe, just maybe, if your parents were in a good enough mood on your visit to Wal-Mart, you could convince them to spring for a new one. The other group was the larger ones. This would have been the Megatrons and the Optimus Prime sized figures and I have no idea how much they cost, but it seemed like they were in the $30s.

Something that expensive was definitely out of my reach.

So I would make out a list (after scanning through the Sears Catalogue) of all the Transformers I wanted so that when I was asked by my dad, I would have them ready to pass along to my relatives. And I was very reasonable, normally only asking for one or two of the more expensive figures (OK, maybe like five or six of them, but still), knowing that if I put a few different names on there, the better the chance they would have to find them in Albany. And then I waited until the promised day. The packages were ready to get opened, and I could only imagine which toys I’d actually gotten. I opened that first one and saw a smaller package… hey, no big deal. A Transformer is a Transformer.

Except, it didn’t have a Transformer label. It had a Go-Bot label. For those not in the know, the Go-Bots were like knock-offs of Transformers. They were a little cheaper in price and generally all the same size. And they “transformed” which I’m assuming a bunch of out-of-the-loop adults took to mean they were Transformers.

A cruel trick from the rival toy companies.

Image by Pawel Grzegorz from Pixabay

You’ll Never Guess

As I said above, my mother’s side of the family were Witnesses, which meant Christmas wasn’t observed (nor were birthdays, ugh), but we did do a sort of “Gift Day” over the years where we exchanged presents, but we didn’t do any of the other stuff. There were no stockings or trees or decorations or any of that stuff. Sometimes Gift Day occurred in January, other times it was more convenient to have it on December 25th.

After I went off to college, it was the longest time I was away from home. I flew up for Thanksgiving, and then come December, it was time for Winter Break. Maybe a week or so before it was time to drive up to Richmond, I get a call from my sister.

“You’ll never guess what is sitting in our living room right now.”

After playing 20 questions, I still didn’t have a clue, so my sister blurted it out.

“A Christmas Tree.”

I thought for sure that she was making a joke. Figured that she’d have a good laugh once I walked in the front door and saw nothing out the of the ordinary. But when I arrived at the house, I walked into the Living Room and sure enough, a huge tree, covered in ornaments and decorations and anything else you could think of. Even with the foreknowledge, I was floored by this.

(And there has been one up every year since.)

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Song of Your Life IV

In the movie, Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke is on a book tour where he is talking about his next project: this idea of a song transporting you back in time. How it grabs you and can make you remember things you’d forgotten – all of it locked within a song.

I feel the same way, where the music moment can transport you back to those memories you might not always have right at your fingertips. Things you thought had been lost are now crystal clear once again.

***

Far – Water and Solutions Album

When you have a group of friends your musical tastes can certainly merge over time. It only makes sense since once you discover a cool band, you’d want to share it with everyone else. Other times you break off into smaller groups within the circle where you celebrate a particular album with everyone else merely tolerating it.

When I first heard Far’s Water and Solutions a group of us had headed up to North Carolina/Tennessee mountains to go skiing. We arrived that first night, and Egg put on the album and when it finished, someone else started it again. This continued throughout the weekend when we were in the cabin. And it was always someone different who restarted it.

I don’t know if I’ve ever quite seen that before or since. Whatever magic contained on that CD was exactly the right sound for the weekend.

***

Helmet – Impressionable

Back in the dark ages of the internet (the 90s), it was suddenly possible to find out about rare songs from your favorite band without needing to scour random record stores throughout the city (now, we still did that too, but this helped narrow down exactly what it was we were looking for). For some bands, the list was extremely long (Pearl Jam, I’m looking at you), but for some others they became these names without any knowledge about what they may or may not have sounded like. And there was one song we did manage to hear: “Impressionable”.

At the same time I started working at the Georgia Tech Radio Station, which meant I could sign up for Will Call tickets for various shows in the Atlanta and Athens areas. Now, I was low man on the totem pole, so most of the bigger acts’ tickets were gobbled up, but a band like Helmet was just the right size for me to snag one for myself and one for Egg.

We make it to the show and decide that any time there was a lull between songs, we’d shout “Play Impressionable”. Aside from being a crazy plan, we certainly didn’t really think about the fact that most of these bands had a pretty standard setlist night in and night out. So unless Impressionable happened to already be on the agenda for the night, there was no way they would have practiced it enough to even play it. Maybe if we’d chosen a one of the rarer album songs… maybe, but not some b-side which had never made it on much of anything.

So, this isn’t the story of victory where the band suddenly heard us, decided we were hardcore fans, and played the track. No, but the song always brings that concert back to my memory.

***

LIVE – Throwing Copper Album Tour

This is effectively an anti-memory. Don’t get me wrong, I love LIVE, but when Throwing Copper came out I was in my Freshman year of college and my tv viewing had gone to near nothing, and my radio listening had done much the same. I still listening and buying new music, but LIVE was not the type of act which would have fallen into my lap without some radio play (which I wasn’t hearing anyway).

Except, it should have been right in my wheel house. My roommate bought a six disc changer that he loaded his music in to play on my stero. He was listening to LIVE, but somehow, I never really heard of them. Maybe it was just one of those things where it didn’t make it into the changer or maybe it was on a different disc when I was in the room, but regardless, I had no idea who the band was.

Flash forward to November of that year, and LIVE was going to play on GA Tech campus. It was literally the largest show they’d done up to that point. My roommate and his girlfriend got tickets, but I don’t remember any talk about the concert prior to them heading out that night. I saw plenty of people heading down to the arena as I walked around campus.

Maybe I was just in my own little world. Just me in blissful ignorance.

Over the next couple of months, I discovered LIVE and only then did I realize I’d missed out on something special. It’s no one’s fault (I do blame Chris a little for not forcing me to listen to them), so it becomes this weird not memory of the time I didn’t get to see a favorite play.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Year Eleven

It feels really crazy to think that this last year was the 11th year of doing this weekly Tessera Guild blog. I’m not sure that I would have thought I’d still be doing it when we started this website, but it has been a great help to ensure I do a little bit of writing (random as it may be most of the time) every week. It also makes an interesting way to look back at the previous year and see what blog posts I’ve written still ring true to me… or stick out in some way. That way I can highlight them (otherwise they get lost in the internet ether).

 

 

The Worst Game I Ever Played

It’s not all rainbows and unicorns when you go to a gaming convention. Especially since Egg and Lee and I tend to try games and gaming systems we normally don’t get to play. Such a bold move can sometimes lead to really cool discoveries. Other times it can lead to sessions which are probably best left forgotten.

And then, finally, there are those games which still haunt me to this very day. Will I ever escape?

Image by Gianluca from Pixabay

 

The One Where I Don’t Get Seasick On My Very First Cruise

My whole life I got motion sick when riding in cars if I wasn’t in the front seat. I’m not sure if my parents really knew that because I tried not to make a big deal about it. But it made family trips a bit of a literal headache. Flashforward to me preparing to go on a cruise for the very first time…

 

The Reason Why – In Our Dreams Awake

I started up a series of blogs where I talk about… well, The Reason Why I wrote the story/book/comic. It’s been an interesting exercise to try and really drill down to the origins of some ideas. Given that we had a successful Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #2, this seemed like a good time to get into it.

 

The Song of Your Life III

I look through my music collection and nearly each album… hell, each song has a little personal moment for me. A signpost on the journey of who I was to who I am now. Through “The Song of Your Life” posts, I try and focus on some of those songs and stories.

 

Rebooting the Marvel Universe

Given the success of Marvel Comic’s new Ultimate line and the DC Absolute line, this blog feels all the more timely, even if it started as an answer to a question asked on Twitter. How do you restart the Marvel Comic Universe from complete scratch?

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The sun is slowly setting, forcing the snow-covered mountain into darkness. The rider hasn’t adequately prepared for the harsh conditions but does his best to pull his meager coat around him tight enough to block out a little wind. His horse underneath him lacks even a winter blanket and is already protesting against continuing through the foot of snow. It didn’t much matter though, the true quarry was supposed to be found in this area. It was like something out of legend, a brilliantly white Arabian horse out in the wild. The idea of it actually existing was lunacy, but he had it on good authority that it not only existed but was found grazing in the area. So he would stay, set up camp if he must, and wait for the damnable beast to appear.

Either that or die of frostbite.

***

We ventured to the beach this week. I’m lucky enough that my family seems to like hanging out with each other, and so we normally head to South Carolina or North Carolina to soak in some sun, sand, and hang out with each other just long enough without getting sick of one another.

This year, my 16-year-old nephew decided that he would bring his Xbox and I had the privilege of observing him play through portions of Red Dead Redemption 2. I’ve watched someone run horses off of cliffs, into trees, allow them to die of exposure, die to a cougar attack, and slide off the side of a mountain. I’ve watched him shoot a trio of strangers for mouthing off to him. And while I didn’t see the slaughter of many innocents in Blackwater, the results continued to follow him for days and weeks after.

Do you take the time and earn a proper living? No, the way of the gun dictates violence in so many things.

Image by Elisa from Pixabay

***

Weirdly, when I play most games, normally, I try to do the right thing when possible. I would never think of going full crazy within the structure provided as I don’t need to ruin what goals I’m trying to accomplish with such morally corrupt actions.

And yet…

And yet… there is something both liberating and disturbing about watching what can only be described as a comedy of errors resulting in a bloodbath. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching a B-level film where the protagonist (antagonist) isn’t entirely sure why he is doing what he’s doing. He’ll rob a man for a couple of dollars but then save another who has managed to get his leg caught in a bear trap.

But… I can’t stop thinking about the horses. All those horse limbs broken. All those horse souls freed from their digital bodies. Their only crime that they were ridden by a psychopath.

***

I’m not normally one to watch a ton of games online. Mostly because I’d rather spend that same time playing the games I have. But I must admit, watching someone else use chaos in one of these games. The randomness of so much of it.

I also have a copy of RDR2 sitting at the house, which means I’ll need to bust it out and decide whether chaos or order is the way to go.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 9

Salsa Shark

I don’t like onions. Hate them, in fact. However, the rest of the world doesn’t understand this, so there are many, many, many opportunities to eat them if you’d like at various resturants. Salsa being a big one. In the Atlanta area, you can’t throw a stick without hitting a Mexican resturant, which means I’m going to have a big bowl of chips sitting in front of me. Now, while others use those chips to scoop up as much of the salsa as they possibly can, I take a slightly different tactic.

I dip the chip in, allowing it to get a little damp, and then make sure to effectively wipe any of the bad stuff on the side of the bowl.

I’ve done this for as long as I can remember. Which also means when I first started working, I would do the same thing in front of my co-workers.

Now, I’m sure people thought this was odd, but they also realized they had more of the “good” stuff for themselves. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Flash forward nearly twenty years at the company Christmas party. One of our remote employees was walking around, introducing her husband to people when suddenly he immediately recognizes me. It takes me half a second and I recognize him from that first job, having worked with him for maybe a year or so. Truly, it is a small world.

And then he says to his wife, “John always dipped his chips in the salsa just barely enough to get some juice on them and that was it.” Twenty years later and he still remembered the random way I eat chips. Talk about making an impression on someone.

***

You Knew What You Were Getting Into

As an engineer, there are long periods of work where you need to get really focused and avoid any distractions you can. There are tasks which can be very repetetive, so over the years I started bringing headphones to work to listen to music and later podcasts. I was certainly not the first at this particular company to do it. I personally found that the focus allowed me to be much faster and efficient with those tasks. A win-win.

However, flash back to a moment where during one of our staffing meetings it was brought up that the budgets on some of the projects were getting stretched thin. An one of the bosses made a point about how headphones and listening to music was likely at the cause of this issue. That because we (and I mean multiple people) were doing it, we were completing tasks slower than we would have if we weren’t covering our ears up.

Not what I was doing at the office.

Now, I’m normally not a person who seeks out confrontation, but this infuriated me. So I asked whether it was possible that the projects were running low on money because they hadn’t originally had enough money in the contract. His response was, “There are tasks that you have to do which are not always fun. But they have to be done without distractions. And hey, you chose your profession… you knew what you were getting into.”

Which, to this day, I still don’t understand what the hell that meant.

We still continued to have our headphones. Maybe the other project managers explained to him how dumb his thinking was (or at least how poor his people managing skills appeared to be).

***

You Don’t Have To Turn On The Red Light

Back in the days of being a younger engineer and living the true cubicle life, your immediate neighbors were the ones you were likely to have the most conversations with. My three closest neighbors would sometimes just have random chats about life, music, whatever you could think of… while sitting at our desks and doing our work. The cubicle walls doing little to damper our talks.

And it is during these times when you really get to the root of things. About how much you don’t know about someone or how much they may not know.

So it was that we all began talking about music. Lloyd was more into hip-hop and was attempting to educate me on those artists. Somehow we got to Puff Daddy, and I said “well, I’m a little indifferent to him after he took the Police song.”

Lloyd was silent for a beat, and then said “Who are the Police?”

After which I was silent for more than a beat. “Every breath you take… that’s the Police. Roxanne? Message in a Bottle? King of Pain? Everything She Does Is Magic?”

“Nope. Nope. Nope. I don’t think I know them.”

My world cracked completely open.

My other neighbor at least tried to save me. “Lloyd, don’t be stupid. You know who the Police are. You’ve heard of Sting.”

And at that point, it clicked into place for him. “Oh, yeah…”

As the years have gone by, I understand more that everyone has their own tastes and blind spots. But in that moment, I couldn’t have imagined not even having heard of the Police.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

The One Where I Don’t Get Sea Sick On My Very First Cruise

Image by Gianluca from Pixabay

When I was about 14 years old my family went to Destin, Florida for a week. Well, technically we did that pretty much every year. When we first started going there in the early 90s there were only a handful of places to stay, even fewer things to do (you generally had to go across the bridge to Fort Walton), and that was probably for the best for my parents and their three kids. However, during this particular year, my grandmother had come to stay with us as well.

Now Nanny loved to fish. I honestly think had she lived on the coast she would have done it from sun up to sun down. So we were definitely going to do some fishing activity while we were down there, and so my parents decided to book us all on a 4 hour deep sea fishing excursion.

Side note – I get motion sick in cars. It’s not nausea though. Instead, I get bad headaches. Weirdly, I don’t get them if I’m driving, and I don’t get them if I’m in the passenger seat. Otherwise, life becomes a bit of pain. Which made family trips all sorts of fun as I couldn’t read to pass the time. At best I could listen to music with headphones on or just try to zone out.

I load up on the boat. This thing likely could hold maybe 30 people. Everyone would have a spot on the rail where they could fish until their hearts desire was full. And there I was, right beside Nanny, ready for the boat to get to the fishing spot and catch all sorts of things.

Image by gwiseman from Pixabay

The trip out there was probably 15 minutes and wasn’t too bad. Though, I felt the very beginnings of a headache, that would likely go away once the boat stopped.

Once the boat stopped moving.

On a moving ocean…

Oh, crap, the boat is never going to stop rocking, is it?

What occurred next I can only (luckily) remember through a haze of blinding pain as I spent the next 4ish hours in the middle of the boat on a cot, writhing and moaning. Because, the only thing that might make things worse would be if there was a storm out at sea. You know, where the boat gets tossed around a little bit (nothing scary, but more than I could possibly deal with).

When we finally reached land, I may have kissed the ground. And every year after, my parents would make the joke about booking another deep sea fishing excursion.

***

Image by Took A Snap from Pixabay

Now, I told you that story, so that I could tell you this story…

My wife and I were married back in 2002, and for our Honeymoon we were gifted a Mediterrean Cruise. We’d fly into Barcelona the morning of departure, and then it would be a week visiting various ports throughout France, Italy, and Malta. I was really looking forward to the opportunity, but my previous “boat” experience weighed on my mind. So I went and got the motion sick patch from a doctor. If you are unfamiliar, you stick it right behind your ear, and it is supposed to help with motion sickness. In addition, my dad mention a bracelet that he’d worn on a cruise which was based on pressure points along your wrist which apparently helped with the symptoms. Finally, I had old faithful, Dramamine to get me through any of the worst of it.

The flight to Barcelona was overnight, and since it was far and away the longest flight I’d ever been on, I made sure to take my Dramamine when I got on the place so that I could sleep. But, sleep on a plane is a sporatic thing for me, so I’m not sure how much rest I actually got.

Once we landed in Spain, it was early morning, and we hurried to the port in order to begin boarding. Somewhere along the way I slipped on the bracelet and put my patch on.

Getting onto the boat, the previous day’s trip, jet lag, and perhaps something else had completely wiped me out. I could barely function when we had to go to the muster stations, and by 3 or 4 when we were allowed to go back to our rooms, I pleaded with my new bride to let me sleep.

“Just give me today, and I’ll be good the rest of the week. I don’t know why I’m so tired, but I can’t…”

Luckily, she saw the poor, pitiful state I found myself in, and took pity… even though it meant missing some of the first evening activities (the big one being the first dinner). I think I finally woke up around 9ish, and when we started trying to figure out why I was so wiped and she wasn’t… we realized:

Dramamine

The Patch

The Bracelet

I’d over drugged myself!

I took the bracelet off. I didn’t take anymore Dramamine. I only used the patch. And the good news was that not only did I not need to sleep the trip away, I didn’t get sea sick!

***

I’m not sure if there is a less subtle message in all of this. Mostly, I felt like a dumbass, but I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the trip… I nearly messed up the trip in a different way. Which feels like a very “me” thing to do.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Reason Why – In Our Dreams Awake

Over the last couple of years, I decided to start writing about the published things I’ve managed to do – comic, short story, and novels. But I wanted to talk about the reason why they exist. Sometimes that’s talking about how the comic came about. Sometimes that’s a breakdown of where I was when it was conceived. Sometimes it’s a look inside my brain.

It occurs to me I never wrote a post for In Our Dreams Awake. Even if I have talked about the origins and it’s history.

The Reason Why In Our Dreams Awake exists is because I feel like I let people down when it didn’t exist.

***

Back when we were first emailing about this story, Egg was doing his best to try and make it in the world of comic books. He traveled around the southeast to various conventions setting up at an artist table with his then girlfriend. He would craft stories, make connections, and was putting in the legwork.

In the meantime, I was traveling down a different path with the folks over at Terminus Media, trying to get the anthologies finished. Trying to figure out how to create a comic book in the first place. And then later trying to figure out how to do more than the odd 8-10 page short.

Both of us were hoping for that little kick from a project or a connection or something which maybe would make it so this crazy idea of making comics might not be as crazy as you think.

In Our Dreams Awake should have been that thing. It should have been the catalyst for something bigger and better.

***

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

There’s this concept called Sunk Cost. Basically it means that a cost has already occurred and cannot be recovered. To me it means that you can’t let your future be determined by mistakes you’ve made in the past. You cannot remain beholden to something because it MIGHT work out for you. Instead, you need to forge ahead almost as if that original mistake didn’t happen.

When the original artist on Egg’s Cyberpunk story fell off the face of the earth, I should have scrounged up some funds and pushed the project ahead with a new artist.

But I didn’t do that.

I convinced myself that we had come too far to go backwards and start 24 pages completely over. I held onto some misguided hope that the time and effort invested in those pages were worth holding the whole project up.

The pages sat there on a computer for over a decade. All that hard work lain fallow.

Even when I finally circled back to the project and decided it NEEDED to get finished and put out into the world, I still couldn’t let go of that Sunk Cost. I still waited to hear back from the missing artist, engaging with him to try and see if we could salvage those pages. And when he ghosted me again, I waited… holding out hope for… what?

***

In Our Dreams Awake is a story about a man who isn’t sure which life he deserves. It’s the story about a man who is constantly wanting something more, something different than his current life can provide him.

But at it’s core it is about DREAMING BIG.

Egg and I wanted to make a comic book. We wanted to have readers and be able to tell this weird story. We wanted to be able to sell a few copies here and there, maybe break even on things when it was all said and done.

DREAMING BIG.

***

So maybe the biggest thing is the things I’ve learned along the way. Every mistake, every misstep got me a little closer to having printed copies of issue 1 in people’s hands. The mistakes that occurred between issue 1’s Kickstarter and issue 2’s current Kickstarter. And probably the mistakes that are likely to happen in the future.

Because doing this isn’t easy. The imposter syndrome is constantly hanging around in the back of my mind. Telling me that all the hard work isn’t worth it. You’ve invested so much, why keep going? It would be simplier if you just called it quits.

Maybe you shouldn’t DREAM SO BIG.

***

But that’s The Reason Why, isn’t it? If I don’t push this through, then the little voice of doubt will have been right. And I owe it to everyone who worked on this comic, whether it was 15+ years ago or it was earlier this year, to find a way to get it out into the world. Because if you can’t DREAM BIG about something so wonderful as comic books, then what can you DREAM BIG about?

***

A quick reminder that In Our Dreams Awake #2 is available on Kickstarter. Go and check it out here.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

What If?

 

The Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #2 is still going! Find it here!

***

I’ve talked before about how the process of In Our Dreams Awake came about all those years ago. But just like every idea, it’s meaning and purpose have changed over the years. The way the project started, and what it has become are ever changing in ways I don’t know that I completely understand.

But it all stems from this central idea I have about the What If Game.

What is the What If Game? It’s the thing that every (or nearly every) human on the planet plays at various points in their lives. It is the time we take to daydream about decisions we’ve made in the past and how they’ve affected our current state of being.

It can be very big decisions:

What college will I go to (or do I even go to college)?

Should I ask this person out?

Should I maintain this friendship?

Should I take this job or another job?

And sometimes it can be very small decisions which could add up to something bigger.

Should I go talk to the professor about my grades?

Should I spend more time working on this project?

***

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

The thing is, this is a good exercise for a person to go through. We should constantly evaluate what we have done, and look into not only the results of those decisions, but anything which might have led us to the moment. In the same way you might analyze your victories and defeats to see what you can do better the next time… the very same thing for the various life decisions we must all make.

However, it is one thing to use this in a way to better yourself. To propel you forward in your life. Like everything, it can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you use the self-reflection.

I have a friend who for many years focused a bit too much on the What If Game. They were so busy looking backwards at the things they didn’t have that they didn’t see all the gifts and opportunities right in front of them. Fundamentally their world view became a bit skewed because the path not taken was the path they thought they should be down.

***

In many ways, In Our Dreams Awake, is that idea taken to the next level. It is about a burning for something extra in our lives. Jason Byron lives his two very different lives, but he isn’t happy in either one. In the Fantasy world, he is willing to risk everything he has for an artifact of an outlawed era. And for what purpose? Because he wants to have a life different than the one he currently enjoys. In the Future world, he loves his life so much that he is trying to doublecross everyone and escape off world.

Because he is simply not happy with where he is.

He looks to the past or he looks to the future, but neither sate his appetite for much of anything. For Jason, both of these paths may lead to destruction.

***

In Our Dreams Awake is a reminder, of sorts, to myself that I should take time to be in the present. To experience things as they are and not constanly look back or forward. Time already flies by. If I’m not enjoying the present… what’s the point of any of it?

***

A quick reminder to go and check out the comic book, In Our Dreams Awake #2 on Kickstarter!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

Repost: Sleep, Perchance…

Make sure to sign up for the In Our Dreams Awake Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project goes live by clicking HERE!

***

I feel like In Our Dreams Awake comes from the same place the following comes from… that frantic, unsure thing where we have this thing (SLEEP) that we must have but area always cutting short with everything else in the world.

***

Alarm off. A slow glance at the clock. The time flickers a thought in my head.

That can’t be right. Close my eyes again as if the sheer act of doing so will change what they witnessed. A slow peek before I’m careening out of bed. A mad scramble of clothes and contacts and “did I shower last night?” and deodorant and shaving and finding a shirt and…

Dragon Clock

It’s already past the countdown clock moment. Now it becomes the beginnings of a true decision. Formulas scream through my brain.

How long is the trip?

When is it too late?

Damn… missed class again…

***

Many years ago Chad told me that he preferred nightmares to pleasant dreams. The very concept made little sense to me at the time.

“Why?”

“Because when I wake up from a “great” dream, I’m back in the real world where things are inevitably worse than the worlds I had just visited. But with a nightmare, I have absolute and utter relief, because my waking life is so much better then any nightmare.

“Suddenly I’m happy to be awake!”

***

I struggle to fall asleep. Not stay asleep… oh, no. That is well taken care of. I tend to stay up too late and want more than my allotted eight hours the next day.

***

Henry Rollins said that you either sleep or you don’t – but you can’t catch up.

***

I respectfully disagree with that sentiment.

***

Your body knows when enough is enough. When you’ve pushed yourself. When you have burned that candle down to nothing but a pool of wax and a long-forgotten wick.

That’s when you need to let yourself catch up.

candle-579580_1920

***

Tonight, I don’t want to sleep. I want to stay up, looking down the internet rabbit hole – wondering where it will take me. I wonder if ancient scholars had the same feeling reading the same obscure text.

Sadly I’m reading about football or baseball or something else not quite so grand.

My nightly ritual where I put it off as long as possible. One more minute. Five more. Let me just finish this article. Where is that link going to take me? What about this video on something from 1 year ago. Five years ago. 100 years ago.

Yeah, I could wait until the next day, but then the information couldn’t swim through my head waiting to greet me in my dreams.

I need to know RIGHT NOW!

***

Reality vs. Dreams? What is the difference really? What if the world ceased to exist when we closed our eyes? And then the very act of opening them created a whole new world?

city in the sky

***

In dreams we are the creator, not always in control, true, but building.

Yet, I have to wonder. Is that actually a truth or just something I believe without real proof?

If that was true, why would I set the clock to a point where I’m late for class? Why torture myself when it is nothing but mental 1s and 0s of my own personal Matrix? What good does it do my body to send that familiar rush of fear and anxiety through my body?

***

What if it were the opposite? What if we are only the creators when we are awake? What if when we shut our eyes that was the real world(s)? That’s why we don’t have control over it. That’s why we can’t get off the railroaded path provided to us.

As strange as that reality might be where physics no longer works the way you think it should. Where people you’ve not seen in years suddenly have different personalities than you are used to. Your wife recognizes you, but she’s different and the same and…

***

We have to follow Alice down that damn rabbit hole no matter what.

***

Another friend in high school once commented that he woke up early (most weekends) because he was afraid of missing something. Better to be awake for whatever exciting/important/whatever thing than to not be.

As if the world ceased to exist when we shut our eyes.

***

The world continues to exist when we shut our eyes.

***

Doesn’t it?

***

We have been working hard to get this issue ready for public consumption. Over the next month or so, I’ll have preview pages, behind the scenes looks, and probably some random other stuff that I’m not remembering right now. I hope you’ll join us on another great comic book adventure!

Remember to sign up to the Pre-Launch Page to get notified when the project launchs on Kickstarter!

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

A Love for Everyday – Part 16

Seven years ago, I created a homemade book for my wife with all these quotes about Love from our favorite TV Shows and movies and books and then I added to it great quotes about love from history or just great quotes about love from anyone. For the past six years, I’ve shared a few from the book around the holidays.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Part 4 is here.

Part 5 is here.

Part 6 is here.

Part 7 is here.

Part 8 is here.

Part 9 is here.

Part 10 is here.

Part 11 is here.

Part 12 is here.

Part 13 is here.

Part 14 is here.

Part 15 is here.

 

 

January 27

It’s like, it’s not even real to me. It’s like my life isn’t even real to me unless you’re there and you’re in it and I’m sharing it with you.

Gilmore Girls

 

February 13

It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.

Agatha Christie

 

March 12

You’re my favorite reason to lose sleep.

Anonymous

April 10

When you think you’re not happy with your life, always think someone is happy simply because you exist.

Anna Kendrick

May 17

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

 

June 24

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Vincent Van Gogh

 

July 29

I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

 

August 26

Loving you is like breathing – so effortless, so natural. And so essential to life.

Anonymous

September 24

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection. The loves, the dreamers, and me.

Kermit the Frog

 

October 30

But our love was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we

Of many far wiser than we

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Edgar Allan Poe

 

November 10

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

Martin Luther

 

December 11

One love

One blood

One life

You got to do what you should

One life

With each other

Sisters

Brothers

One life

But we’re not the same

We get to

Carry each other

Carry each other

One… life

U2, One

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 8

Image by piviso from Pixabay

She Knows Where You Live

During 2020, I was lucky enough to have the type of job where I could work from home. However, the job wanted to make sure we still felt some level of connection with the rest of our coworkers even if we weren’t seeing them regularly. So we ended up with Zoom call happy hours where we would chat… it was actually nice. However, what always cracked me up was one of my coworkers would normally ask a question about where someone lived and from that appeared to hack into the government database to discover all sorts of things about you that you didn’t think was out there.

It became a running joke for any new employees to warn them that if they gave her any information, she’d have their addresses within the hour.

 

I’m Having a Problem With My Computer

We once had a Temp employee who was helping us out on a series of deadlines wih the goal of hiring them on full time if things worked out. At that particular job, I was the one who they designated to help them out on any problems they might have with our network/computers/jobs/etc. I didn’t mind doing that at all (I’ve come to realize over the years I really like helping the junior engineers, so in some ways this was one of the steps down that path). After a couple of weeks of the Temp working on any number of projects, they came over to me and said there was a problem with their computer… it was crawling.

I walked over to their desk and saw it was really slow. Like slower than I’d ever seen any of our machines run. I start doing some digging and I realize what the problem is – the computer is out of storage.

Then I dig further.

The Temp had been saving all the files they’d worked on to their computer as an extra level of backup in case something went wrong. Now, I can understand some things you might want to do that with… and maybe they’d had a nightmare scenario at a previous job which caused this behavior… but this was above and beyond. It was as if ANY file they touched at all got backed up to their computer.

After a conversation about the companies’ backup procedure, we managed to get the machine cleaned up enough… for like a week. And that became a weekly routine of trying to explain that not everything needed to go on their computer.

Every week.

Owen Wilson

At the various holiday parties and monthly lunch and learns, there are moments which hit you out of the blue. I can’t recall what we were having lunch for in particular, but a series of stories were being shared. At the end of one of them, one of the engineers made what can only be referred to as an “Owen Wilson WOW” sound. At that point, I started paying attention to her reactions and sure enough Owen Wilson Wow made multiple appearances. With the best moment being during a meeting where some rather uninspiring thing was being shown for the group and I heard a “Wow” from two rows behind me and nearly lost it right then and there.

It has now entered my own lexicon throughout my daily life. Anytime anything deserves a Wow… Owen Wilson gets his kickback.

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

The Song of Your Life III

In the movie, Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke is on a book tour where he is talking about his next project: this idea of a song transporting you back in time. How it grabs you and can make you remember things you’d forgotten – all of it locked within a song.

I feel the same way, where the music moment can transport you back to those memories you might not always have right at your fingertips. Things you thought had been lost are now crystal clear once again.

***

Image by Mollyroselee from Pixabay

Def Leppard – Hysteria

One of the first albums I ever owned, I nearly wore out the cassette tape as it would play behind me while I shot baskets throughout so many afternoons. But more than anything it transports me back to a particular summer where I’m maybe 12 or 13 at my grandparents’ house in south Georgia. My sister and I would normally spend two weeks with them every summer and hand out with our cousin. The thing was that south Georgia heat is nothing to play with. We’re talking 100 degrees easily during most afternoons, and in the area I’m talking about, it was probably closer to scrubland than woods sometimes (so not as much shade to potentially keep you cool). We tried to stick to the indoors as much as possible, but even back then the adults were always wondering why we weren’t outside playing (I wondered if adults didn’t feel heat in the same way, but now, as an adult, I know it’s certainly not the case). So I took a basketball out to the weathered and battered goal and turned on Def Leppard and cooked in the heat.

Good times…

***

Guns N’ Roses – November Rain

When you are a poor high school student, you really depend on tape trading with your friends in order to experience anything more than what your own feeble funds might allow you to purchase. One of those tapes was a copy of Use Your Illusion 1 (and 2 as well) which Chad Shonk had made a copy of for me. I devoured that tape over the course of many weeks before I finally decided to just go and get the CD. Imagine my surprise when this song Novemeber Rain came pouring through my stero… a song I did not recognize at all. I popped back on the tape, fast forwarded to where the song appeared and got a weird gabled version of the song that was abruptly shortened as well. So it was that one of the bands greatest songs finally managed to be appreciated by me… months after the album had been out.

***

Korn – Blind

Right after I graduated from high school, my parents moved the family up to Richmond, Virginia, leaving their oldest in behind in Georgia to begin college at GA Tech in the fall. It was a great summer as for many weeks I pretty much was by myself. My dad would be down about every other week, but otherwise I was on my own (luckily for them, I was anything but a wild kid – I wouldn’t have known how to throw a party even if I’d wanted to). Just before the end of summer, the movers came and packed up all our worldly items and off we went to Richmond, where I think I technically lived for about two weeks.

It was there I discovered a record shop a couple of miles away from the new house. Every couple of days I would pop up there to see if they had anything of interest. And one day they had these sampler tapes from a band named KORN. Free means go ahead and grab one just in case. I got home, popped it into the stero, and was blown away by what I heard. Suddenly, a random trip to the store had introduced me (and my friends shortly thereafter) to not only a brand new band but the beginnings of a whole new music (Nu Metal).

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Turn the Page on 2023

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

 

I normally like to take this first blog of the new year and do both a look back and look forward on the various projects I have been working on. However, 2023 was an odd year in that I’ve been working on things, but overall it has probably been one of my least productive years in some time with no good milestones of releases to kind of mark my personal progress. It’s likely to a lack of discipline to sit my butt behind the keyboard and do the work, mixed with some shiny object syndrome, and some real life events that made it where many nights I just wanted to veg out rather than be productive.

So, with that thought I think a better use of my time would be to look forward to 2024 and see what possibilities lie in front of me:

In Our Dreams Awake

In 2022, Egg Embry and I launched a Kickstarter for the first issue of In Our Dreams Awake. Due to various reasons (some hinted at above), we weren’t able to get to the second issue Kickstarter within the 2023 calendar year. However, issue 2 is complete and ready to be unleashed into the world during the first quarter of the year. In a perfect world, I’d like to see all four issues get their Kickstarter runs while still allowing for maybe a final shorter Kickstarter in 2025 for the trade. I’ve never run more than one crowdfunding campaign in a year, so this may be easier said than done. Still, it would be nice to bring a story to a close after nearly two decades.

 

The Crossing

In 2020, Robert Jeffrey, Sean Hill, myself, and 133art came together to tell a story which was a sort of love-letter to the Dimension hopping stories of science fiction (think Sliders or Exiles). Then the pandemic happened. Then Sean Hill got himself famous with Marvel work. And the project kind of got back-burnered. After some discussions late in 2023, we have new pages and are looking to potentially having a path to wrapping up the first story in what (hopefully) could be a much larger sandbox. Assuming things go well, I could see us having a Kickstarter for this during the second quarter of 2024.

Another Comic Project

I look at everyone who is doing independent comic books and notice that they have multiple projects going at various stages of completion. And while I have that in some ways (see the above), I also need to look towards the future and not just 2024. It is all fine and well  if I have 3 issues of In Our Dreams Awake come out and maybe two issues of Crossing this year, but what then? Do I kill any momentum I might have gathered during 2024 and 2025 becomes a waiting for the artwork to get done type of year? Or could I start the wheels turning this year so that when Dreams is done, I’m immediately ready to launch the next project into the world?

So that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out in this last week. Some of it depends a great deal on whether I’m successful with Dreams and the Crossing. If those fail or even just squeek by… it could change the entire equation. But if you are going to take a leap of faith, I could see worse things to do. I have two projects that would make a decent follow-up, so the only question is which one to attack first.

 

S.O.U.L. Mate

I swear this is my white whale. I have a full draft of this one. I have done a first pass of edits. But it is still missing something. It’s nothing big, the overall skeleton is there, but I think there are a few places within the draft where things need to be punched up and/or elaborated on (fleshed out). Editing is the least fun part of things sometimes just due to the time investment on my side. If you think about it, when you read for pleasure a 300 page book can take days/weeks of reading (according to how fast you read). With editing, I’m having to reread the work but with an eye for where the weaknesses in the manuscript might be and then make the edits. An hour of editing might get me through 1 chapter. And if I’m editing, then I’m not writing anything else… very much a push-pull effort on my time.

The other thing is when this thing is ready to get released into the world, I want it to actually do more than any of my previous works. Now I’m not delusional, but I’d also like it to do more than pizza money. I really need to have my marketing strategy down pat when I put this one out (really that goes for everything though).

Image by G.C. from Pixabay

Untold Series

I jump around genres. That’s a path to failure. So I’ve been working on a series of books (and novellas and short stories) to try and get a proper release that will take hold and maybe grow the audience with each release. This won’t be ready for release this year. At this point I have 2 1/2 of the novels done in what I see as a 6ish book series. I have notes filling up pages of notebooks. I have worlds being created and destroyed. But this big push for this one is consistantcy in writing on the series so that perhaps 2025 might see the release of Book 1. No matter, if I make more and more progress on this insanity, I will be extremely happy.

 

Hollow Empire

Mr. Neill and myself wrote a serialized story set in a world where the Black Plague event happened twenty years eariler and the world was still picking itself back up from getting punched in the teeth. We did 6 episodes and collected that as a full-length novel (Season 1). In the years since, I’ve wanted to go back to this story, but have always back-burnered this in favor of something else. However, Jeremy has written 2 additional novellas in the world in the meantime.

It is like an itch I need to get at… I have one novella ready to go, but need to finish the next two before I do any releasing. Regardless, more work on this is needed this year.

Short Stories

At some point this year I wondered about both my published and unpublished short stories. I have a few building up in my folders, so I started putting them all in a Scriviner file to see where I was in a potential Anthology. I was pleasantly suprised to see I had about 40,000 words over around 10ish shorts. And I have about 4 other stories that would be really good fits in there that are in progress. This is another “make progress” as I wouldn’t want to try and put it out this year but maybe in 2025…

***

So that’s a look toward my writing future. I’m optimistic that come this time next year a whole bunch of these items will have a big checkmark beside them. Fingers crossed.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

A Love for Everyday – Part 15

Seven years ago, I created a homemade book for my wife with all these quotes about Love from our favorite TV Shows and movies and books and then I added to it great quotes about love from history or just great quotes about love from anyone. For the past six years, I’ve shared a few from the book around the holidays.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Part 4 is here.

Part 5 is here.

Part 6 is here.

Part 7 is here.

Part 8 is here.

Part 9 is here.

Part 10 is here.

Part 11 is here.

Part 12 is here.

Part 13 is here.

Part 14 is here.

 

 

January 25

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

Dr. Seuss

 

February 12

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

E. M. Forster, A Room With A View

 

March 29

Time is

Too slow for those who wait

Too swift for those who fear

Too long for those who grieve,

Too short for those who rejoice;

But for those who Love,

Time is not.

Henry Van Dyke, Music And Other Poems

April 22

If anything happened to you, I’d be so destroyed they’d have to strap me to a bed and feed me through a tube. After five or six years, I might be capable of taking care of Rex. In the interim, you should assign a guardian.

Janet Evanovich, Fearless Fourteen

May 16

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.

Katherine Hepburn, Me: Stories Of My Life

 

June 17

Whenever you are confronted with an Opponent. Conquer him with love.

Mahatma Gandhi

 

July 11

One day spent with someone you love can change everything.

Mitch Albom, For One More Day

 

August 10

You don’t marry the person you can live with…

You marry the person you can’t live without.

Anonymous

September 25

What greater gift than the love of a cat.

Charles Dickens

 

October 28

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

Vertigo

 

November 9

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Carl Sagan, Contact

 

December 7

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.

Roy Croft

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

A Love for Everyday – Part 14

Seven years ago, I created a homemade book for my wife with all these quotes about Love from our favorite TV Shows and movies and books and then I added to it great quotes about love from history or just great quotes about love from anyone. For the past six years, I’ve shared a few from the book around the holidays.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Part 4 is here.

Part 5 is here.

Part 6 is here.

Part 7 is here.

Part 8 is here.

Part 9 is here.

Part 10 is here.

Part 11 is here.

Part 12 is here.

Part 13 is here.

 

January 9

What I really want to do with my life – what I want to do for a living –  is I want to be with your daughter.

I’m good at it.

Say Anything

 

February 27

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar:

but never doubt I love.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

March 30

 

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.

Henry Miller

April 20

 

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Jorge Luis Borges

May 15

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired.

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.

Richard Siken

 

June 10

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.

Judy Garland

 

July 25

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing.

Charlotte’s Web

 

August 15

 

But love doesn’t make sense! You can’t logic your way into or out of it. Love is totally nonsensical. But we have to keep doing it or else we’re lost, and love is dead and humanity should pack it in.

Because love is the best thing we do.

How I Met Your Mother

September 13

That’s when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you – without you asking.

Adriana Trigiani, Very Valentine

 

October 27

My only nightmare is waking up in a world where you’re not mine.

Anonymous

 

November 14

With my last breath, I’ll exhale my love for you. I hope it’s a cold day, so you can see what you meant to me.

Jarod Kintz, This Is The Best Book I’ve Ever Written, And It Still Sucks

 

December 5

Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.

Alexandre Dumas, The Count Of Monte Cristo

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

10 Years Later – Part Two

We’re now on the other side of 10 Years worth of posts. A time where I’m hoping that I can push myself to write more on the various projects I have going. Though sometimes the amount of bandwidth feels too much. Like too much time is spent doing everything but the writing.

I think it is a good thing to reflect back on what I’ve done and accomplished through my posts. Highlight a handful of others that might have gotten lost in the shuffle over the years. So many words…

Stan Lee

Without Stan Lee I might not be a writer. His work on those early Marvel comics helped to pave my way into the fandom I have today. Though all the collecting and reading, it was comics that I wanted to write more than anything else. So without him, I’m not sure I would have gotten even half as far as I have.

30 Years Ago

I’d completely forgot about this blog post. But it is the origin story for Courtney and me. And while I don’t know every thought going on in 17 year old John’s mind, I remember enough of it to put it out there for everyone to read.

I’m The Problem

Egg Embry and I have a joke about how the two or three comics he is currently collecting is the only thing staving off armageddon for the comic book industry. And every other week there is an article out there discussing why comics are not doing as well as they used to do. Or why can’t they get more fans. Or what things could they do to improve things. I read these articles and try to take in everything I can, even if I literally have zero power to do anything more than what I am doing.

Except I had this thought, maybe I am the problem. Maybe you can pin it all at my feet. Maybe I’m the bad guy?

 

The Darkest Timeline

Weirdly, I’m writing this particular blog post in the hours after another Atlanta Braves postseason loss. Another year where they should have won more games in the post season. Career years for many of the players… I don’t get the feeling very often, but I really thought this was going to be the year. Other teams manage to do it, and yet…

(Note to self – this post was prior to the 2021 season where we did win it all, so while it is dark, it isn’t as dark as it had been.)

 

To Become A Super-Villain

Written during the shelter in place for Covid, the lack of interaction with anyone other than Courtney started me thinking that this could be her villain origin story. So this one is more of a list of things for us to avoid.

Westley

I merely clicked on the link to the one, and I started tearing up again. A reminder of the hole this little guy left in my heart. But I am especially proud of this piece because it is raw. It is as much as I could think of in those days after he was gone. The words flowed because I had to make sure I remembered everything I could… that if I did that then I could feel like others could understand how that little cat filled my life in a way I didn’t know was possible.

 

***

I hate leaving on this down note, but the last one is likely the most important thing I’ve ever written on this site for what he meant to me. So go hug your pets. Give them treats and kisses and snuggles and enjoy every moment you have with them.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

 

 

10 Years Later – Part One

In 5 days it will have been 10 years since I posted my first blog to this website. At the time there were four of us doing our best to create some content, potentially help raise some awareness about the projects we were working on, and maybe even assist each other in an “the tide raises all boats” sort of way. Over the course of ten years there have been just over 2100 posts made by the various creators. Which is crazy to think about considering it feels like a bit of a fever dream that we actually followed through on doing this.

For me, I don’t know if this ever really moved the needle much for any of my comics or books. Maybe one or two, here or there, over the years, but as time went on I came to realize the true benefit was simply ensuring I sat down at some point during the week (many times very late into Wednesday morning) and actually write something. Writing is repetition. Writing is routine. And on Tessera Guild I managed to do that in spades.

Looking at the stats, I have over 570 posts since that first blog went out all those years ago. Up until last year (I think), I hadn’t missed a week, though in the past couple of years I have done some reposts every so often of older blogs to try and get newer eyes on them.

So in the spirit of looking back, I wanted to highlight a handful of blogs that I am especially proud of:

I Should Have Paid More Attention to C. Thomas Howell

C. Thomas Howell was in a movie called The Hitcher, which was about the bad things that can happen to you when you pick up a hitchhiker. This particular post is about the time I decided to give someone a lift. If it isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, it is top 10 at the very least.

He’ll See Me On the Flipside

I wrote this as a sort of therapy for myself. A way to try and make sense of who I am and how I’ve gotten to the life I had. It hops back and forth throughout my life, sometimes connecting bits and pieces and sometimes not. But it is a quick look at how to build a me.

(As a side note about this one… there is a moment in the Watchmen comic where Dr. Manhattan’s conciousness bounces around showing how he is living simulaneously throughout the points of his life. And while I have read Watchmen, it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I saw those comic pages again and then remembered this blog. An unintentional homage, I guess.)

So What’s He Going To Buy With All That Gold?

While I’ve shared other short stories on this site, this one was wholely written for the blog. I’m not 100% on how I managed it, but I think I wrote it over two nights after watching The Hobbit for about the 10th time. It is one of those questions I’ve not really seen asked or answered… we just expect Dragons to have treasure.

Creatures Big and Small

I’ve always been an animal person. I was the kid that pretty much could tame to most vicious animal. That love and caring has carried over into my adult life. And while I wouldn’t trade my time with the animals for anything, I still tear up reflecting on the ones who are gone.

New Myths and Legends

The old gods and goddesses demanded worship from their followers. They gained power as the people fell in line, but over the years those old ones have faded away. However, I think I’ve discovered a new goddess who we all have begun to let control our lives…

My Musical Love Affair: Pearl Jam

If there is something I’ve written about more than anything else other than comics it might be Pearl Jam. They are MY band. In a way, they are the true soundtrack to my life as I’ve grown from a teenager listening in my bedroom to the adult writing this post… they are a sort of constant.

Not Like This

My reflections on the Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl in the aftermath of disaster. Nuff said.

***

10 years is a long time, but rather than miss out on some key posts, I’ll have part two next week.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Old Man Shouts at Cloud

As I get older, I think I’m experiencing more stupidity in the world around me. Maybe its just the stuff which didn’t bother me when I was younger now gets me for some reason. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but the following things have become an annoyance which is only growing everytime I encounter it. Maybe it is because I design roads every day, but I’m going to lose my mind.

Not Going the Speed Limit (at least)

Look, I live in the Atlanta subburbs. Everyone drives crazy. I once had relatives come down from New York and complain about our drivers. We have a Perimeter around the city which I believe acts as a qualifier for the Indianapolis 500.

So why is it when I’m driving home from work I somehow find myself behind a person who is going at least 5-10 MPH below the posted speed limit?

I’m more than willing to overlook it if I see you’re going slow because you are lost or just not sure what street you are supposed to turn down next. Because, as some point, you’d turn off the road I’m on. But that never happens. No, we pass street after street and their speed remains the same (SLOW) as it has been the whole time I’ve been behind them. For the 3 mile stretch of roadway where this seems to ALWAYS happen, I just can’t figure it out. It’s at least once a week, if not more.

Just drive the speed limit… you’re killing me (albeit slowly, but still).

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Random Stopping for Sideroad Cars to Enter Traffic

Let me qualify this by saying, if traffic is thick and the person in front of me slows down to allow a person from a sideroad or driveway to join in the fun – I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is the people who randomly stop (or nearly stop) for the car on the sideroad or driveway. There is no one in front of them slowing the flow of traffic. No, this is them, for SOME REASON, thinking “the person behind me will know I’m going to out of the blue nearly come to a complete stop for no good reason”.

This is a more recent problem, but over the last few months I have encountered it a dozen times. I’m not sure what people are thinking, but I’m fully sure I’m going to get into an accident because of this foolishness (and it will end up being me who gets the ticket for Following Too Close, even though I leave a ton of room most of the time).

U-Turns Are Apparently Just a Thing You Can Do Whenever

Contrary to the title of this section, it isn’t true. When you are sitting at a red light, you can’t just make a random U-turn on Red.

THAT’S NOT A THING!

I get that you don’t want to wait for the light to change and give you the green arrow (of protection). I don’t like waiting either. But it is very likely you are going to hit someone (probably me) because you can’t be bothered to follow the rules of the road.

Can You Please Pull Up While We Cook Your Food

OK. This one is roadway adjacent. I have never understood the rationale of fast food drivethru windows who ask you to pull up instead of waiting at the window when there is no one else in line behind you. What sense could it possibly make to then have to run the food out to me. I could have sat there at the window and saved you the hassle. And hey, if someone does come… that’s when you ask me to pull up. But if everything is clear, there is literaly no reason to waste all our time with such a dumb ask.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

30 Years Ago

It all began on July 24, 1993. I went on my first date with Courtney Becker (at the time). We went over to my buddies’ house to swim in his pool. Probably not the best plan overall since what would happen if it rained? Why not go with something more tried and true (dinner and a movie)?

Fear.

If we rewind the clock just a little bit…

Courtney and I met at Kroger. I’d been working their for a couple of months at that point.

***

The only reason I chose Kroger in the first place was to get my dad off my case. You see, after I’d hit 16, I had jumped to get my driver’s license, but I didn’t have a car. At best I could run errands for my parents… maybe use it to go out with a friend. But the months rolled by and I had little to no desire to get a job.

It seemed like a drag.

But, it was going to have to happen. However, I was smart. I decided I’d just go up to the closest grocery store, get the application, bring it home, and buy myself a week or so. At some point they might call. At some point, I might have to go to another place and fill out an application. This was going to take some time to happen.

It took an hour for it to happen. I went in for the application, the manager was there and interviewed me, and suddenly I have 20+ hours a week.

So laziness led me to Kroger. Had I been a little more of a go-getter, then perhaps we would have never met.

Lazy for the win!

***

I actually wasn’t there for her first day of work. When I did meet her she was dating another guy (they’d started on the same day), so I didn’t think anything of it. But as time went on, we became friends. She’d invite a bunch of us over to her house to watch the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs (this was back when it was a unicorn of sorts for the team to be good). Another boyfriend at some point in there, but I wasn’t angling or anything. I was happy to have a friend.

***

I went on one date prior to the faithful July 24 date. To say I lacked self-confidence would have been an understatement. When I was asked by my parents why I didn’t ask out any of the girls, my answer was a bunch of rambling gibberish.

The truth was Fear.

Fear of rejection.

People make the joke, “what’s the worst that could happen? She says no?”

They act like it is no big deal to hear someone say NO. And they aren’t entirely wrong. Yes, being rejected wouldn’t feel good, but that wasn’t where the Fear came from. It was the thought of them laughing at the prospect. What if they not only rejected me… they then went and told everyone who would listen that John McGuire had tried to ask them out.

What an idiot.

What a nerd.

***

With all those thoughts swarming around my head, I thought it better to pine away in silence with any of the girls in school I might have liked.

Time went on. A year had passed. And a group of us went to Six Flags (escorted by my mom). I don’t remember anything special particularly happening on that day. I’m sure Courtney and I rode some rides together, but she rode rides with other people too.

***

I’m oblivious.

Still am.

***

We got home and my mom said “That girl likes you.”

What? Not a chance of that. You see, my mom wasn’t the one who lived in my head. She wasn’t the one who thought they were ugly. She wasn’t the one who felt socially awkward. She wasn’t the one who wasn’t sure there was a person out there for them. Maybe come college. Maybe.

But she persisted. “That girl likes you.”

***

Kroger intervined again. Ashley in the floral department pulled me aside one day and told me straight out “Courtney likes you. She wants you to ask her out.”

Now this… this felt like enough information to go on. Maybe she did like me? Maybe she would say yes?

But there was a problem.

Our work hours.

Every week they would post the work times, and typically I’d have 3 days (nights) off and 4 days on. Courtney was the same. So when I went to find that magical night where both off… a week went by. And Ashley came back, because apparently she thought I didn’t understand. “What’s taking you so long?”

So I had to just hope the next week’s assignments would grant that rare concurrance of both schedules being open. And as luck would finally have it, somehow neither of us worked Saturday night.

***

I wish I could remember how I actually asked her out. We talked on the phone a fair amount, so it was probably during one of those conversations.

***

The last detail was to figure out what to do. My friend, Lee, must have seen how nervous I was with the entire prospect, so he offered his pool and other people there so that there would be a little less pressure.

I jumped at the chance.

And I asked her out.

Image by Nos Nguyen from Pixabay

***

The strange thing was the Fear was still there. Even though I knew she liked me. Even though I knew she’d say yes. The Fear tried to worm its way into my brain and convince me that wasn’t going to be the case. That somehow everyone had misread the situation, and my nightmare of rejection was right around the corner.

***

She said yes. We went on our first date 30 years ago. We’ve grown up together. She is my best friend.

***

And I’m still amazed that she said yes back then.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Tales from the Cubicle – Part 7

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Everything I know or think is wrong.

One of the younger guys at the day job is writing a manifesto. Well, not actually, but he honestly should. He has tons of thoughts and opinions on things that don’t really affect anything in the real world, but for him they are not in any level of gray. This are black and white issues and you are a fool for thinking otherwise.

Chicken Nuggets is for children.

I heard this one about a year ago and it both blew my mind and made a level of sense. If you think about it, chicken nuggets are one of those staple foods for the pickiest of eaters (kids under 10). My own nephews will refuse many, many things, but nuggets are not included in that bunch. And there is something fundamentally childish about their size. Basically small enough where you shouldn’t have to cut them up for the child.

These are food items that might take each and every one of us on a little trup back to when we were kids. Maybe, perhaps… is that why we’ve been choosing to eat nuggets over tenders?

Twizzlers are the worst candy EVER.

I was told this last week when asked what my personal favorite candy is. The look of disgust which reflected back at me was unexpected and honestly, unwarranted.

Listen, I get it if you don’t like licorice. I don’t like the taste of the stuff, but Twizzlers is just processed strawberry goodness. How can that ever be wrong? This is one of those where I will dig my heels in and not budge on my love for this one.

Besides, the man didn’t know the difference between a Milky Way and a Snickers. I’m not sure his vote truly counts here.

A frequent sight

Hey, There’s a Leak

My last office had a nasty habit of leaking after particularly hard rainstorms. The ceiling is made up of tiles, and so the telltale signs were extremely easy to notice. My office mate and I would put a trash can under the most likely drip spot and go about our day (after informing the powers that be of the problem). They would then call out the roof guys (I’m not sure specifically what the “roof guys” actually did to the roof). I know they walked around on the rocks up them and we could hear every step.

Inevitably they would come down and say it wasn’t a roof issue, it was an air conditioning issue.

Which feels weird because it leaked after it rained on the roof… but OK. The A/C people were called in. They would go through the pipes and stick their heads through our ceiling for a day before informing everyone that it couldn’t be an A/C issue. It had to be a Roof issue.

And like Groundhog Day, this cycle continued about every other month for the better part of twoish years that I was in that particular office.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Repost – I Should Have Paid More Attention to C. Thomas Howell

I feel like somewhere in the midst of what you’ll read below is a horror movie waiting to find its way to the screen. Having lived it, I may be too close to the source material.

Either that or shown as a thing you should NEVER EVER DO.

***

The year was either 1997 or 1998. Now a Junior in college, I had driven up to the Georgia Tech Student Center to pick up my mail and was on my way back to my car (and then my dorm room) when I heard a woman’s voice call out to me from the dark Atlanta summer night.

“Excuse me, sir? I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you?”

I turned around and saw an older woman, maybe late forties, but most likely in her early fifties. Regardless of her actual age, she was someone who had that look where life had never really cut her a true break. Through cigarettes and alcohol she might be able to numb the pain of existence, but she was destined to be one who, from cradle to grave, would work until her fingers became little more than nubs. Stick thin, her leathery flesh hung off her bones.

I felt sad for her immediately.

“Can I help you with something?”

She moved a little closer to me and nodded, fully emerging into the parking lot’s light. “I hope so. You see, I’m supposed to go and get my younger son from the baby sitter. And my older son was supposed to give me a ride, but he’s not in his dorm room. I can’t seem to get a hold of him.” She glanced down at the watch on her wrist. “And the sitter is done at nine and it’s already eight-thirty.”

I didn’t immediately respond, even though I could tell where this was going. When you live in downtown Atlanta, you get used to people coming up and asking you for spare change or various other favors. In my first year living downtown, I probably (read: definitely) ended up giving too much money to the random homeless who crossed my path. But that bit of humanity had been stamped out by the bank account of a college student living a few years on his own.

I braced myself for the question.

“She’s only a couple of miles down the road. If you could give me a lift,  I’d be forever grateful.”

Now my mind and mouth normally do things in agreement. Mostly the mouth waits until the brain has finished its various calculations or what-have-you and then when it gets the proper instructions it spits out the correct sequence of words.

Not this time.

“Uh, yea, I guess I could do that.”

Immediately my brain rebelled. Why had I said that? I don’t want to give her a ride. What the hell am I thinking?

Her face lit up, and I was suddenly glad that I had said yes. This would be my good deed for the year. Heck, for the century possibly.

“I’m right over here.”

As I moved over towards my 1990 red Pontiac Sunbird, I didn’t notice her wave to another person. Another beaten down by life person, but male. Same tanned leathery skin… in his late forties, early fifties as well. He wasn’t rail thin like his wife, but there was only the slightest beginning of a beer belly hiding under his shirt.

“This young man is  going to take us to the sitter’s.”

Now this is the point I should have said something like “no” or even “hey I’ve got something else I need to get to that I just remembered”, because now the numbers were not in my favor. With just her in the car she’d be in the passenger seat beside me. I’m 6’5″ 275 lbs and all of 21-22 years old. I could take on the world with the side benefit that being that size, no one typically bothered me in the first place.

Yet, with him along for the ride that meant someone would be in the back seat.

Behind me.

Where I couldn’t see what he was doing. Not a good idea.

I think my brain was on strike that night because it only barely fazed me. My southern hospitality was going to get me killed. And there is even a saying for a situation like this. Don’t pick up hitchhikers. I mean that is the number one thing right up there with “Don’t take candy from strangers.”

What is wrong with me? My parents taught me better than this!

Sure enough she moved into the front passenger seat, and he sat in the back, straddling the middle so that I could see him in the rear view. But not really see what he was doing back there. I turned out onto North Avenue going West. My eyes darted from her to my rear view mirror to see him and then back to her. I barely remember the road, driving on instinct.

urban-legend-killer-backseat

“So, where is it I’m taking you?”

The woman answered quickly. “It’s only a couple of miles up the road.”

“Actually, we don’t need to go to the sitter’s. She’s taking the baby back to the house.” The smoker voice from the back jarred  me to the core. What the hell? Now I’m taking them home?

“Oh, then just continue on North.”

Again, I should have found a way to get them out of the car. But I was stuck taking them home. Somewhere my screams wouldn’t be heard by anyone.

I’ve been in three fights in my entire life. Two of them were won pretty quickly. The other was a losing battle, one of the few times where the other kid had been a little older and a little stronger. Mostly I observed what my grandfather had always told me: I better not ever start a fight, but I damn well better finish one that someone else started.

Those thoughts drifted into my mind while I tried to determine my best course of action. If they had a knife or something similar I might be able to put a hurt on one or both of them… if she had the blade. If he had the weapon, then I was going to need something of my own. But what else was there? A passing car’s lights illuminated the interior of the car and my eyes flashed to the keys dangling from the ignition. Rough edges of a weapon. It wasn’t much, but it might be better than naked fists.

Still I tried to think things through. I figured as long as I don’t do anything to set them off, or show that I know I am in trouble, it has to be in their best interest to wait until I get them to wherever their true destination was. Otherwise they might risk the chance that I drive the car off the road and try something now.

They made idle chat with me. A decade later, I couldn’t tell you what we talked about. I’m pretty sure that the most that escaped my lips was Yes, No, or I don’t know. I was too busy putting that math side of my brain to work trying to analyze the angles of this situation I’d gotten myself into. Plus it was hard to hear what either of them were saying due to my heart echoing throughout my body.

We drove and drove and drove, more and more minutes piling up on the odometer. Now I’ve taken North Avenue east many times on my journeys to hang out with friends, but I had never gone this far west on the road. Everything had long since become unfamiliar and I kept waiting for them to say something, to have me turn off, but more time passed and nothing. I had no idea how far we needed to go before I got them “home”, but I kept on, sure that terrible things awaited me.

Finally at some point we turned off North and then worked our way onto some of the more back roads.

For those unfamiliar with the layout of Atlanta, if you are in downtown and you drive more than about 20 minutes in any direction you will run into an interstate. Worst case you’ll hit the perimeter I-285. This is a road that loops around the city, encircling it.

Base Map 285

Yet, we had driven far enough and still I didn’t see a sign for the highway, nothing. Somehow I was in the backwoods of Georgia while still being in the city. It was as if they had managed to take me to a part of town where street lights were only a suggestion and not required. Long stretches went by with only my Sunbird’s headlights to show that the world outside the car even still existed. And I was driving these two random people up these roads I didn’t know existed.  And these roads were the type where I don’t even know how there was nothing on them. Very few houses. No restaurants or gas stations. It was like I’d crossed over into the Twilight Zone. Nothing made sense in my head. My heart pounded in my chest, threatening to explode.

dark road

What was I supposed to do? Call their bluff? Point out, ever so nicely, that I had only agreed to take one of them “a couple of miles” to their younger son?

I spotted a small cluster of lights in the distance. As we got closer I could see it was a convenience store, and then the night took a turn.

“Do you think we could stop up here? I need to get some cigarettes.” The way the man said the words and the paranoia in my brain combined to make me wonder whether it was a question or an order. So I pulled over.

“Would you like anything? A drink or something?”

Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do, let you get me a drink and somehow put a drug into it and then I’m missing a kidney or I’m dead or something.

I locked eyes with him in the rear view mirror. “No, thank you.”

The man exited the car, and I held my breath that the woman would follow. I slid my hand very casually so that it was resting on the gear shift.

They both get out of the car and I’m gunning it.

She didn’t budge. “Hey honey, get me a pack of smokes too while you’re in there.”

They were just playing with me now. I know it.

He returned a few minutes later and I wondered if the old guy had gone in and robbed the store (sometimes I still wonder this). They might already be ready to kill and eat me, but there was no telling how far they might go.

Hmm.

We journeyed for a bit longer. Again, I would say the exact amount, but I lost track. I think I’d been gone from Georgia Tech about 40 minutes by this point.

They both pointed out a side road to turn down… it was dirt. “Ours is the one on the end.”

Of course it is. Where else would you live but off a dirt road within the Atlanta city limits.

I stared out into the darkness, but couldn’t really find the beginnings of a structure to know where I might be going or for how far. My car’s shocks protested the pot holes and each bump caused my two passengers to shift in their seats. We began to climb a fairly steep hill, and when we finally came over the crest I caught site of their double-wide home.

This thing might have been nice looking once upon a time, but now, through either the elements, or lack of caring about what the shit-hole looked like, it could only remind me of something that should be condemned. Various bits of junk littered the yard and every redneck stereotype crept into my thoughts.

“Home.” My voice may have cracked with the hope that this was the end of our voyage. My own fight or flight on high alert.

The old man shifted in the backseat. “I just feel awful about making you drive all this way. I have some money in the house. If you could wait a minute I’ll run in and grab it for you.”

I shook my head. “That’s OK. I’m just glad I could get the two of you home.”

Liar! Just get the hell out of the car and let me go!

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Have a good night.”

They seemed to pause at that. And to this day I’m not sure about what they were thinking. Maybe this whole thing was just them trying to get home without needing to take the bus. Maybe they really had a son at Tech who they’d come to see. Maybe they had a younger son who they needed to get to, but then the sitter decided to bring him home instead of waiting for them to arrive.

Or maybe they had been planning on killing me the whole damn time.

Until I told them to have a good night. And that was the point they had a change of heart.

The two of them got out of the car, but before the wife could shut the door the man held it open and stuck his head back into the car.

Just gun it!

“You know how to get back?”

I nodded in the darkness even if he couldn’t see my action. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Alright. Take care.”

And with that he shut the door and I turned my car around and headed back to the paved streets. It was only then that I saw a sign for I-285. I may have taken it to just get my bearings (I honestly don’t remember). My body began shaking, the adrenaline pumping through my system for the better portion of an hour finally began to wear off. In a daze, I somehow managed to guide my car back to more familiar streets and then back to the dorm.

Somehow still alive.

I may not have slept well that night… or the next few.

So there you have it, The Stupidest thing I have ever done. My last good deed, ever.

Food Advice for April 1st

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

It’s come around again for me. No matter how hard I try to make the date change, it lurks in the shadows, waiting for me to not pay enough attention. It knows that as soon as I let my guard drop, that will be the true end of me. So I must remain diligent or else fall prey to the terribleness of April Fools’ Day.

You know, the day where every site likes to try and run some article to convince you of that horrible thing you’d hoped would never come true has, in fact, now come true. Or maybe you’d just like to read a little about an upcoming movie or comic… yet, can you be sure of any information you receive on that day?

Nay, I say!

Instead, I’d like to honor my least favorite day of the year by talking about the thing that feels like April Fools Day every day of the year.

***

Garlic Mashed Potatoes are not fancy.

I don’t know where you get off thinking that adding a little bit of garlic suddenly makes them a dish to feed to kings and dignitaries. I don’t care what the cooking shows have told you. They aren’t improved by such additions. Instead, the garlic actually takes away from the perfection of the dish.

The beauty is in the simpleness of the dish. Heck, the simpleness of the food itself.

It’s Potatoes that are mashed, with butter and milk and maybe salt. That’s pretty much it.

It’s a basic dish. Potatoes are basic.

Image by Couleur from Pixabay

And that’s OK.

This was never supposed to be a dish served at the five star resturants. You know, those places where the amount of food on the dish is quarter sized? Where the food is so fancy, you don’t know which fork to use to eat?

Mashed Potatoes are supposed to be served as a way to try and take up every spare inch of your plate. It should be a question of what might fall to the floor, that’s the amount of mashed you need. It is comfort food. It is pure goodness.

Stop trying to make it something it isn’t.

Please.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

A Love for Everyday – Part 13

Six years ago, I created a homemade book for my wife with all these quotes about Love from our favorite TV Shows and movies and books and then I added to it great quotes about love from history or just great quotes about love from anyone. For the past five years, I’ve shared a few from the book around the holidays.

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Part 4 is here.

Part 5 is here.

Part 6 is here.

Part 7 is here.

Part 8 is here.

Part 9 is here.

Part 10 is here.

Part 11 is here.

Part 12 is here.

 

January 8

 

One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.

Stephen Hawking

 

February 11

 

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

 

March 8

 

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance Of Being Earnest And Other Plays

 

April 9

 

And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.

Stephen Chbosky, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

May 5

 

My heart, it feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange – no gifts. No goods. NO demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.

Stardust

 

June 7

 

I want you. All of you. Your flaws. Your mistakes. Your imperfections. I want you, and only you.

Anonymous

July 10

 

A true relationship is two imperfect people refusing to give up on each other.

Anonymous

 

August 4

 

Love and hope can conquer hate.

Barack Obama

 

September 7

 

Give a man a ball, he will be happy for a day.

Give a man a woman, he’ll be happy for a night.

Give a man a woman who loves football, he will be happy for life!

Anonymous

 

October 7

 

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.

Og Mandino

November 5

 

And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

Kiersten White, The Chaos Of Stars

 

December 4

 

You’re my everything. Everything else is just… everything else.

Anonymous

 

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Being an Advocate for Yourself

… Because you can’t count on other people doing it for you.

This idea has come up recently in my life. The idea that sometimes just showing up and doing good work may not be enough to get what you believe you deserve (or have earned). The mere fact that you’ve written a comic or a novel or short story or screen play or whatever doesn’t guarentee anything at all. There are other aspects that you have to be able to do, to help grow your potential fanbase, to help more and more readers find your wares.

But this isn’t about the marketing parts of being an independent writer. This isn’t about trying to do a mailing list every month or bi-weekly or weekly (which I am the worst at doing). This isn’t about the ads you need to run in order to drive people to your books.

It isn’t even about writing more books.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Except, maybe it is about all of those things. I gotta admit, I’m not entirely sure of exactly what it consists of.

I struggle with it. The thought of needing to pitch myself to every person I meet. Cold opening somehow letting people know that I write is not in my DNA currently. I do much better with a wingman/wingwoman who can do the whole “Did you know John writes?” Then I can launch into a conversation about it and we’re off to the races.

To be able to have a confidence that not only are your ideas and words good enough for their money, but also that they are good enough for their time. I’m not writing to get rich (though I wouldn’t turn it down, to be sure). I write because something in me makes me want to spill my thoughts onto the page. My hope is that someone else will read something of mine and come away with it having left an impression on them.

So how do I manage to be that advocate for myself? How do I find that spot in random interactions? How do I make sure that someone is willing to take a chance on a short story? A Kickstarter?

How do you prove your worth to those who have no idea who you are? How do you prove your worth to those who do know you?

No one else is going to do it for you. And I’m not sure anyone can really teach you what you need to do. My hope is that I get better at it with practice (at conventions, in online conversations, in random interactions).

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Maybe this is one of those take a small step forward every now and then and soon enough, you’ll have come a long way?

I certainly hope so.

***

John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com