Category Archives: writing

A Christian Writer’s Journey

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Journey

I’ve always been a dreamer, something that my father instilled in me from a very young age because he would say things like, “son if you work hard, you can be anything you want to be. Follow your dreams.”  I saw my old man write books, toil as a carpenter, and then go to law school. He practiced what he preached, rising from abject poverty to success through discipline and years of burning the candle at both ends. When I left the University of Florida to pursue a songwriting career, my dreams were vast and my ability limited. I had no idea how hard my road would be.

It occurs to me that I’ve had a lifelong problem managing my expectations, and this character trait has tarnished my relationships, my career, and my soul. When you shoot for the stars, mostly you don’t wind up where you thought you were going. The heart of the matter is pride. Leaning much upon my own understanding rather than upon God. So here’s my story, and perhaps some other folks can avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made, and perhaps with the telling of it, maybe I’ll finally wrap my head around the truth.

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I moved to Nashville way back in 1992 with a heart full of dreams and a cheap guitar. Those first years were heady, back when I knew I would  “make it,” and I figured that within a few years, I’d be living the dream. I played the Bluebird, penned hundreds of songs with fellow songwriters,  and wrote every single day. I saw, quickly, that I had much to learn. I’d been in town for about a month when I saw a writers round with Bob DePiro and Mike Reid… they slayed me with their talent. Every song was perfection, their vocals were mind-blowing, and their musical ability was so far beyond me that I saw there was an entire mountain yet to climb. I embraced it, and I learned, worked on my craft, mentored by some great writers. I had songs on hold for major artists, went to number one parties, and rubbed elbows with the movers and shakers of Music Row. Then I started doing a dangerous thing.

I began spending too much time gazing at where I wanted to be rather than what I needed to do to get there, and worse, whether that was where I should go. Enter the bitterness, the, sense of betrayal and the resentment. The great Harlan Howard, whom I had the great pleasure of spending time with, once said to a disgruntled songwriter, “well, nobody called and asked you to move to Nashville.” Right.He didn’t say that to me, but it would have bee spot on. Nobody told me to decide to become a writer..that was my choice. But the desire to succeed was eating my soul, clouding my vision and ultimately hurting my music. Some of my fellow writers nicknamed me “Doctor Doom.”

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I moved back to Florida following a divorce and the feeling of being let down in my songwriting career (or lack thereof,) thinking that I could leave writing in my rear-view mirror. I was wrong, and I started writing fiction, which didn’t require the same sort of schmoozing and glad-handing that songwriting seems to. When I got my first publishing deal, I was ecstatic. I’d signed a contract for a trilogy, and I hadn’t even written two of the books yet. I decided I would be a wildly successful author within perhaps a year or two. I’m hard headed, obviously, though my wife uses more colorful words to describe my frequent and woeful lack of understanding.

It takes years of hard work, multiple books, and networking, and talent to make it as an author. Like any other artistic endeavor, it’s a subjective thing, and people will buy what people buy. I find the writing in Fifty Shades of Grey to be awful, but tens of millions of people strongly disagree; E.L. James reached the stars by connecting with her readers, and more power to her. I could undoubtedly learn a thing or two from her. So, I’m writing, working, knowing it takes time, and trying not to chafe against that knowledge. Trying to enjoy the journey, and not focus on the destination.

During these decades of writing, I burned down one marriage and almost destroyed another. One of the central reasons this happened is because I expect things to go my way, and when they don’t, I get rankled. My essential impatience, my propensity to reach beyond my means to grasp. Marriage is hard work, and when things go south, which they will in any marriage at some point, I’ve had the feeling that things should be right again quickly. Wounds should heal, others should change, I should change…if not overnight, then within a time frame that I deem acceptable. Utter nonsense. It’s destructive. Because, once again, that resentment sets in and things only get worse. You end up feeling like you’re wasting your time, and when a sense of futility becomes pervasive, it’s already almost too late. It takes discipline and hard work to make it back from that.

Against this backdrop, I’ve experienced the same sort of impatience with God. It sounds as dumb as it is, yet when I’m in the midst of it, I can’t see it, missing the forest for the trees. I cry out to God, asking for help with more selfishness than humility: Help me make it as a writer, help my marriage, please send a briefcase full of money from the sky!  When I don’t get the quick results I desire, I feel betrayed. Like no one is really listening. Like the songs on the radio are full of false promises, and that the Word itself has misled me. But I have misled myself by choosing to focus on the wrong things, by hearing what I want to hear instead of the truth.

The truth is, life can be terrible, hard, and mean. And there is no assurance of a good outcome for any of us on this earth simply because we choose to follow God. The whole idea of abundance theory preached in many mega-churches is dangerous drivel.  It’s connected to Calvinism and the idea that success is predestined, a concept which helped to form the Protestant Work Ethic and build a nation, but which in many ways undermines the deeper message of the gospel. This Calvinistic attitude spawns the belief that poor are poor because God has decided it, and conversely that the wealthy are wealthy because they have earned favor in the eyes of the Lord. This belief system is insidious. Ask the Paul, Peter and Timothy about that.

Because the assurance and peace Jesus and the Apostles talk about is the eternal kind, not the earthly kind, and the our peace on this rock is found in knowing this and feeling fulfilled and joyous despite our circumstances. Salvation, peace, and joy are not things we have earned, but which come, ultimately, through the grace of God. Apart from God, I can do nothing. I am worth nothing. And this, perhaps, is the central truth I’ve missed over and over again.

The story isn’t mine. It never was. Paul extolls us in Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our fate…”  I’m an author, yet I’m not THE author. I focus on the things which I want, the tangible trappings of success, and I fix my gaze upon that which I cannot obtain alone. I cling to my pride like a talisman and wonder why I become disillusioned. I truly want to reach people, to touch lives and be a force of light, but I’ve been going about it all wrong, putting my own story ahead of the most important story.

It will take hard work and discipline, and faith, but when I look back twenty years from now, I pray I will be able to say that I was living and writing for the right reasons, not the wrong ones, and that I released my foolish pride, my selfish expectations, and human arrogance. By emptying myself, I pray that God will fill me with His spirit and that the kind of peace which matters is the peace I will have found.

I still have a mountain to climb, and my way is unclear. I have much to learn, and am certain I will falter. I am not alone, and in this knowledge I will rest assured, striving to fix my eyes on Jesus, my sole destination.

God and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

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When the world is smashed and burning, I believe people will question why God abandoned us, while many who are not religious will turn to religion as a way of coping with the pain and destruction around us. Two of my favorite Post-Apocalyptic novels deal directly with faith: The Stand, by Stephen King, and A Canticle For Leibowitz, written by Walter M. Miller.  These novels both had a direct influence on my writing.

I’ve had a few reviewers attack the religious elements of my work, although the overwhelming majority of readers, both religious and agnostic, are not troubled by the way .the characters respond to the end of the world as we know it. While I wrote these novels from a Christian perspective, the books are by no means intended to be an extended sermon. Man has an innate need to connect to our creator, to find a way to explain our existence. Indeed, the idea of the apocalypse itself appears in Roman and Greek myths. The stories of the Biblical Flood and Armageddon go back thousands of years, and are a part of our collective human psyche.

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There is a reluctance now, it seems, for post-apocalyptic fiction to address religion. I wonder why that is? Are authors fearful of alienating readers? (This was certainly very much on my mind when I wrote Objects of Wrath.) Whether it’s zombies, a virus, an asteroid, or a war, the majority of PA novels delve into the questions of faith in a cursory manner. I’m not implying there is anything wrong with this approach, and certainly many survivors would not ask larger questions, being more concerned with finding food or fleeing the approaching hoarde.

When I read a novel or watch a movie, one of the things that keeps me interested are the questions, “what would I do? How would I react? How would that feel?” Whether it’s watching an epic battle from Braveheart and putting myself into the shoes of the men waiting for a thundering charge from heavy cavalry or reading the heart-wrenching scenes in The Road, where the father tells his son how to shoot himself. I contemplate the emotional impact, try to see and feel what the characters would be going through. In Saving Private Ryan, when the soldiers are coming toward the beach, rounds zipping through the water, bombs falling, what would that feel like, to have been one of those men? What would I do?

I’m certain that I’d pray. I’d question my faith, but I’d be simultaneously clinging to it. I think that’s how most people would behave. There are atheists in foxholes, but not many.

One of the  things about post-apocalyptic fiction which appeals to me is that it offers an unflinching examination of the human condition, a window into our essential being. When laws have disappeared and civilization is absent, what sort of people are we? Philosophers like Locke, Rousseau and Hobbs talk about our “state of nature” before the social contract. I love books that take a look at this question. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy The Walking Dead. While some novels offer a very dark outlook on humanity, in which most men are truly evil by nature, others are more hopeful. I think most people are decent and good, although evil is hungry and seductive. Can good defeat evil, even when it looks as though darkness has already won?

Religion can be a force for good or great evil. In my second novel, Children of Wrath, this is the central theme. Faith in and of itself is not always a good thing. There are atrocities being committed around the world even as I write, killing carried out in the name of religion. Whether or not one believes in any sort of God, there is no denying the way that religion has shaped our world. After the world as we know it ceases to be, people will still turn to the heavens, sometimes shaking their fists, other times begging for help.

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No Safe Place

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No safe place is left these days
Though I wish it wasn’t true
Hunkered, shaking, in silent cold
A piece of me in you
Amid the ruins and bleached bones
This world gone insane
Bitten, bleeding, dying, dark
In the end betrayed

It wasn’t really you
I try to believe
Like the thing I am becoming
Won’t truly be me
Maybe we’re all hungry
And that’s how it’s always been
The ones that take big pieces
Are the ones we let in
I’m turning
Yearning
http://www.amazon.com/Objects-Wrath-Sean-T-Smith/dp/1618682245/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428375401&sr=8-1&keywords=objects+of+wrath

Remembering Silver Hill…My Magnolia

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The woods are lonely and empty there now, but in my mind there is a place which will always remain as it once was. A house on a hill surrounded by forest and filled with laughter and generations and love. My grandparents called it Silver Hill.

In the spring and summer the air of Upstate New York has a sweetness to it. As if the maple trees and rocks, the flowers and the sun breathe new hope into the land itself. Little things take me back. The smell of fresh-cut hay, the clink of ice in a glass of tea on a hot day, the aroma of pipe smoke, the sight of an old orange tractor.

For me, Silver Hill was magic. It was a place of safety and refuge, a constant in a childhood rife with upheaval. My folks moved many times, and I attended about twenty schools, but Silver Hill remained a beacon of hope and stability when things got dark and mean. I remember riding the lawn mower with my Grandfather when I was about four or five, and later being allowed to mow the whole yard myself, a thing I enjoyed. It’s where I learned to shoot, love the woods. I recall reading an entire series of Piers Anthony books over about a week, perched in a comfortable nook of a towering tree, surrounded by twittering birds, the wind whispering through the leaves, and the branches rocking me gently.

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There were family reunions and birthday parties during the warm months, and I’d roam the woods and the yard with my cousins, all of us with skinned knees and dungarees. Catching frogs and tadpoles down at the pond, always on the lookout for a snake or Bigfoot, who was rumored to inhabit the area, and whom I was fairly certain I’d seen at least once. Building forts of increasing complexity. The adults would join in games of softball, and football, and there was this wonderful togetherness. That’s how I remember it, and that’s the truth which remains.

We ate blackberry pies, hot-dogs from the charcoal grill, and stacks of steaming pancakes from the griddle, my Grandmother making them as big as we wanted. Eating was a kind of celebration.

In the fall there was a bittersweet, fleeting explosion of color, as the woods came alive in red and yellow and every breath held the promise of the coming snow, a sharp, tingling sensation, a singing feeling in my soul.

Winter meant vast snowbanks, crackling fires, and Christmas. The aunts and uncles and cousins would migrate to Silver Hill, and we’d eat turkey and stuffing and tear into presents, savoring each one. We opened them one at a time, and it was a joyful thing, anticipation and wonder all wrapped together. We built igloos and had snowball fights, epic battles when the wind was cold and the snow was deep, knowing a warm fire, hot chocolate, and a slice of pie waited inside.

Silver Hill became a part of me, and looking back I realize that it’s because of the people, my family, my blood, and the memories which live there for all of us. We’re spread out all over the country now, but Silver Hill, and those black and white and faded picture still recall.What I remember most is love, unconditional and true.

Before every meal, my Grandfather would lead us in a short prayer, the same one every time,and it is etched indelibly into my heart.

“Lord we thank you for this food, and for thy many blessings.

We pray you will bless this food to our use and us to thy purpose.

Amen.”

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Friends and Sharks

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It’s late and Springsteen is playing in my sanctum and I’m thinking about friends. About what friendship means to me. I thank God for my friends, I thank them, and I wish I’d been a better friend all along, to all of them. Friends are precious, and I’m blessed to have some.

Friends make you better, even if it’s better at being worse. A true friend will do both things, over the years. That’s how it is. I’ve been lucky enough to have friends like that, and I’ve been a bad influence and a good one, a hellion and a saint, a healer and a divider. My friends have been that too, and that’s good.

We know many people, but have few friends. We have plastic smiles and rainbow relationships which are real in the way of whipped cream, and equally as fulfilling. We all know the difference in our hearts, and miss it when we settle for less.
My friends are few, and I’m all right with that. I’d like to be a better friend, having more to give than I take.

Friends are honest when it hurts, even if it hurts them. Even when honesty is something which pierces a lie most terrible and devouring. There is a certain loyalty in that.

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An old friend is someone who is there for you, when you need them. I’ve found that often this doesn’t mean they’re actually around or that I even talk to them. They’re with me in spirit, and their memory speaks wisdom to me, words I need to hear, a voice in my mind like my own conscience, but separate. Sometimes, though, you need a friend to physically pull your ass out of whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.
I’ve had quite a few near-death experiences with one particular old friend of mine, and here’s one. We were SCUBA diving down in the keys. Now, I’m an experienced diver and a strong swimmer, but when things go wrong under water, they tend to go very wrong, very fast. We were spearfishing on a coral reef, and at first we stayed together, but wound up getting separated, each of us chasing fish all over the reef. There is a kind of hyper-focus that happens when you’re after a nice grouper, the thrill of the hunt and the idea of what that fish is going to taste like that afternoon when you pull the boat up to the restaurant and it gets blackened and served with the lobster also in the cooler. An epic meal, a perfect end to a glorious day. An ice cold Red-Stripe, conch-fritters, the sunset on the water, you get the picture…
I was down about a hundred feet, pushing the limits of my air. Visibility had been pretty good, but the current grew stronger and the water got progressively more cloudy. The thing is, I’d speared a nice fish, maybe a 20 pounder, and he’d twisted off the spear. The fish was bleeding, and he was certain to die, and I hated that. So I kept pursuing him, him swimming sideways and thrashing about with blood coming out of him, ringing the dinner bell.
I like the idea of sharks. Diving on the reef, you know they’re around, and sometimes you catch a shadowy glimpse of a torpedo shape gliding through the murk at the edges of your vision. It makes the dive special and memorable when that happens, and there is a sense of being lowered on the food chain and being a part of nature in a way that is impossible in the world of Starbucks and paved paradise. I get alarmed when they start getting overly curious, though. I’ve had sharks and barracuda steal a fish I’ve speared, and that’s an uncomfortable experience. Blood in the water and feeding frenzies and what-not.
This magnificent grouper decided his best bet was to hole up beneath a car-sized brain-coral. I bled air from my BC and put my belly on the sand and peered into the darkness. I could see the blood trailing out, but I couldn’t see the fish. I stuck my arm into the hole (dumb) with the spear gun extended, and wound up nailing the fish with the loaded gun. I dragged him out from under the hole, feeling pretty pleased with myself. My mask was leaking and salt water burned my eyes. My air was critical. I began my ascent.
I should have let the fish go in the first place, because at 100 feet down, I knew I had to make safety stops to avoid getting the bends. When I saw the Great Hammerhead cruise past, then circle, I was afraid. He was about fourteen feet long, and thick, passing close enough that I could see his teeth. I’d never seen one while diving before, only from the safety of a boat. Hammerheads eat people from time to time. Graceful, deadly, moving with effortless, predatory intent.
I’m not one prone to panic. I’ve faced some pretty grim situations where people were trying to kill me with guns or knives. This time though, I started to freak out. I couldn’t think clearly, and even remembering it now, I have a blurry feeling of terror in me. I couldn’t just shoot to the surface because I’d die. I had to pace my ascent from the depths, rising at the same leisurely speed as my bubbles. And I had two safety stops looming ahead, where I’d be forced to hang there in the water. I had about 100 psi left in my tank, so if there wasn’t any sort of reserve in there, and probably even if there was, I was in trouble.I let the line out on the spear gun so that the speared fish dangled about twenty feet below me. It was mostly dead, still bleeding. A reef shark showed up to enjoy the show, but it was the hammerhead and my lack of air that worried me the most.

I heard the engine turn on the boat, twice. My friend telling me to get my dumb ass to the surface. I waited at the first safety stop, and it got hard to pull air. I was at the end of the tank. I could see the boat, a shadow against the sun above me. I was using more air than I should have because I was fighting the current, drifting now, away from the boat, still maintaining my depth. There was a splash.
My friend, deciding that I’d been down too long, and seeing the damn big assed shark, jumped into the ocean. He swam down, and we used the extra regulator, a thing called an octopus, to get to the surface, the big shark giving us the evil eye the whole time.

We pulled into Whale Harbor Marina that evening and ate a platter of grouper, lobster, and conch fritters. It was the best meal I’ve ever had.
That’s a good friend.

The Last Thing I’ll Ever See

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Her face was the last thing John saw there in that hospital bed with the beeping sounds and sad thin sheets. Her eyes were the placid blue of the reef in the afternoon, a kind of wistful hope shining from her while she held his hand at the end. Her hair was close cropped and grey and her oval face lined with worry and years and the love of a man she’d walked through hell and back with.

John’s eyes remained open, and he saw her for who she was, for who she had always been, and he perceived this not with his eyes but with his soul, floating, unfettered now and able to walk through a door to yesterday, lingering above each memory, tasting the truth of each moment as though for the first time, savoring the fleeting preciousness in a way he wished he had before.

A tumble of long dark hair falling over her shoulders the first night they’d met so long ago, sultry and whispering, her skin smooth and pale in the night, an eager vulnerability about her which seemed to fill a  deep need in John, a missing piece he hadn’t known existed until he met her. The rush of falling in love, the wedding down in the Keys beside the ocean, when she put on his ring and life stretched out before them full of possibility.

He saw their first child born, her lying on the table of this very hospital, on a different floor, a happy place of life and rebirth. Her face shimmering with sweat and the tears in her eyes when John placed the infant against her breast. He saw her on the beach, the waves surging while she held a small child’s hand, giggling and laughing, the sun bright and warm and good.

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The journey darkened then, and John found himself drifting through a murk he would rather not face, a certain truth which makes a man hurt. He saw her anguished tears and heard her sobs and felt a deep pain emanating from her wounded spirit. There was a bitter taste to that time, to those memories which wrapped around each other until they became years interspersed with moments of light, but which were not well lit, and there was a heaviness in that time, and the darkness had a kind of weight. There were demons there, and they were mean and bent upon destruction.

He heard the angry accusations, the shouting and the denials and felt a loneliness creeping cold into his bones, for it was in both her and him back then, and now it felt worse than it did at the time. Perhaps because it was done and there are things a man can’t take back even though he wishes he could, and sometimes it’s years and that’s a hard thing to face, there at the end. There was an eroding of the soul, a depletion of spirit which caused her to retreat into herself, and neither of them knew it until it was almost too late.

The journey was not yet finished.

There was rebirth and renewal, and he saw her shedding the weight she’d gained over the course of four children and a decade and she was emerging again like a rose which has lain dormant through the cold hard winter, only to blossom once more under the kiss of the warm spring sun. She laughed and sang and danced and looked upon him with eyes bright again. Her canvas was fulll of color and swirls of crazy dreams and she found a truth and validation in her art because it was meaningful and good and true and there was healing in it.

Her childish nature radiated from her, not in a petulant way, but in the way of wonder and glory, and she grew, becoming herself at last, transforming into the woman she’d always wanted to be because she was finally discovering who that woman was. He watched her gaze in awe upon the streets of Florence, a glass of red wine in one hand and her head tilted back to embrace the gentle sun. He felt the wind rushing at his face, top down, her singing beside him as they crested the Golden Gate Bridge, driving without a destination in mind for the journey then was the purpose, the little things and shining moments of glory. The years were happy and tinged with a sort of golden light and they went by too fast.

Her face was the last thing John saw, and that was how it should be.

A Life, Well Written…Heroes, Villians, Lies and Truth. One Draft.

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I used to scoff at regrets, probably because they hadn’t yet accumulated enough mass. I was confidant and convinced, in the way young men are, that regrets are for for fools. I believed I could fight my way through life without the deep wounds and scars born of mistakes, and I charged with unswerving abandon and careless faith and speed straight into middle age. The truth hurts when it comes crashing. I’m an author, but I haven’t written my own life the way I should have, the way I would if I were a character in one of my own books.

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,”
Charles Dickens opens David Copperfield with that poetry, my favorite first sentence in literature.  Not only would I like to write like that, I’d like to succeed in living that great commission. Heroes fall and fail and triumph in the end because they learn from their mistakes, because they are able to feel the sting of regret and overcome great obstacles and great odds. There is always adversity, the thing is to defeat it.

I write heroes in my books that would despise me if they knew me, because they’re better, these characters and constructs who are more brave and good than I am. I’m just a writer, not a hero.  I’ve been writing and dreaming and lost in words and acting as though I had an editor for my life. Someone to excise the mistakes, cut the fat, correct the regrets. I’ve got just one draft, though, here and now, which is my life here on this earth. No auto correct, no edits, no way to change the character arc or tweak the ending. One draft, all the way through, is what I’ve got, and if it sucks, then it does. It’s a lowsy story.

I think there’s a bit more to it, though, than that. I’m far from figuring it out, and I’ve got my scars and regrets. I’m writing this interactive video game, where the characters make choices that impact the ending, and I think the universe is like that. Sometimes there are no good endings, no matter what, not here in this mean world. Mostly, though there are endings which could be satisfying when we, the actors in the play, the characters in the story of our lives, listen to the wrong things. I know I do.

Paul says in Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.”   I’m an author, but I haven’t been the author of my fate, not in the way I’d like to believe I’ve been. I certainly haven’t kept my eyes where they were supposed to be looking. One draft, one chance to get it right, and my choices make a difference, and I’m still hoping that my life will be written well, both by me and THE author.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

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Don’t hold your breath unless you’re under water, because while you’re waiting for the next thing, life is drowning you and all you end up doing is choking for air.

It’s the quiet that defines a man, not moments of fleeting wonder and raucous triumph, for the real glory lives in the little things we overlook and forget, the mundane and true. It’s in the Sunday sigh of a woman in love while the rain comes down outside and the moan of the wind and the lazy smiles and wrinkled sheets. Walks in the woods when the world is still and the air is sharp and right and the leaves are turning with bittersweet autumn, death and renewal and the promise of spring, possessed of a magnificence all its own.

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The glory in life is found in the simple things. Changing diapers at two in the morning, dancing around the living room with your baby to sooth him back to sleep, walks to the bus stop at dawn, tying shoes and bed-time songs. The laughter over silly things and inside jokes, late-night trips to the hospital.There is glory there, There was. We often miss it along the way, for our eyes are on the wrong things, and then we ache for it when we remember to remember.

We’re constantly bombarded by images of success, and what it means to be happy. It’s the bigger house, the newer car, the promotion, the vacation, the next thing. We live in a world of instant gratification which seems largely bereft of true happiness and contentment. Our technology is miraculous and gives us the ability to talk to friends around the world with a few clicks, yet we are lonely, for the cell phones and ipads, video games and social media which provide this so called “connectivity” lead to a disconnect with our souls. It’s a hollow feeling.

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It’s hard for Christians, who are exhorted to be “in” this world but not “of” it, for the lessons Jesus taught go completely against what the world continues to tell us. Christians are supposed to surrender to be victorious, lose in order to win, give to receive joy. It’s hard to keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus when the world comes crashing in, howling and loud, tempting and insidious.

The lasting, true glory is there, though, in a relationship with the Creator, and in those mundane moments, if we listen, he is whispering to us. I admit I’ve been holding my breath my whole life. It’s time to breathe.