Free Excerpt time!

Greetings and salutations to all my steady castaways, and everyone who's finding me here for the first time! You're welcome here, to just come on in and be yourself. No need to grand-stand or make any points. You are you, and you are welcome here.

I passed a milestone a month ago that I totally forgot to announce: My 10,000th page view. As of writing this, 12,571 people have reached out to touch us. Okay, so a few of those were the same person more than once, but that's still pretty cool. So join me in a libation to celebrate: *pours coffee/hot chocolate/tea  for all* Wassail!

Anyway, this week I need to announce something else: My publishing house, MuseItUp Publishing, has established another deal with a new, established vendor who is helping us reach a whole new level in helping folks to see what we have to offer. At this precise moment, iBooks is running a package special for four complete novels in one volume, for 99 cents! So, check this out: for one ridiculously low price at the Apple bookstore, you can get four top-notch sci-fi books.

I get to join the likes of Rosalie Skinner, John B. Rosenman, and Joanne Elder for our first-ever package deal in The Prodigies of Science Fiction. 

Click on the cover to go there. I'll let ya.

 

 

 As for my part in this project (for you new fans), I wrote the EPIC-Award-winning Best Thriller of 2012, Becoming NADIA.

And now, the promised Excerpt:

“I'm not me,” Nadia moaned, curled up in her seat. She wrapped her arms around her knees. Her hands shook. “I'm somebody else, and I'm not me anymore. I never was me, was I?”

Jon leaned over to touch her on the shoulder, but a hand shot up and she writhed away. “Don't touch me. Don't even come close to me,” she cried. He could see that her cheeks were already wet. She cried softly to herself, “If I hadn't known, I could have gone on. If I hadn't known—”

“If you hadn't known,” Jon interjected, “You'd still be wondering who Phillip was. If you hadn't known, you'd still be in their hands.”

She looked up, indignant. “Those people saved my life, Jon. They said it took more than twenty surgeries, just to save my face. They put that much into me so I could have a life again. They even had Jenna move in with me so I could adjust—”

“Or be monitored,” said Jon.

“What are you talking about?” Her eyes flashed angrily.

“Have you ever, at any time, been left alone since you woke up?”

“Of course,” she snorted. “I went to work—”

“To be with the people who just tried to kill you.”

“I went shopping by myself. There was a little grocery store just around the corner.” She stopped and went back to hugging her knees.

“What happened there? Alicia, what happened to you?”

“Don't call me that!” Her voice lowered threateningly and her eyes flashed. “Don't you call me by that name.”

“Then who are you? What do we call you now?”

“I don't know.” She sat curled up on the seat, her eyes locked on the lighting control panel by the cabin door. He watched her for a while, her chest wracked with silent sobs.

Jon got up and rummaged through the tiny galley behind the copilot's seat. He opened a drawer and took out a couple of small bottles. After he opened them both, he sat back down and held one out to Nadia.

“Peace?” he offered. She said nothing. “Nadia, I'm sorry. I should never have said that. I don't think I can ever understand what you're feeling right now. But maybe we can relax a little and figure some of this out.”

Nadia didn't respond at first, but after a few seconds, she released her knees and dropped her feet to the floor. She took the bottle of Scotch and sipped it. Her face wrinkled in disgust and she almost spat it back out. Holding the bottle up, she tried to read its contents through watering eyes. She couldn't seem to make words come out of her mouth.

“It's Scotch,” Jon offered. “Don't tell me you've never drank alcohol before.”

Finally, she found her voice. “I can only answer for one year. And the answer is 'no.'“

“I can get you some water, if you want.”

“What does this do?”

“It relaxes you.”

“I think I need this more,” she said, tossing back the bottle in one swallow. She squinted hard and gulped once, then lay back in her seat, feeling the warmth radiate from her stomach. “Let me know when we're there, please. I want to close my eyes for a little bit.”

“Sure, Nadia.”

Jon picked out a magazine from the rack in front of his seat and tried to read it, but couldn't concentrate. He kept stealing glances at the petite figure of the woman across the aisle. Her blonde hair poured in a golden, curly waterfall past her shoulders. Her squarish face complemented the slim build. From first appearances, it didn't seem as if she wore any makeup, but as Jon studied her full lips, he noticed a subtle shade of lipstick, and just a trace of makeup around her closed eyes. Brown, he remembered. Captivating, almond-shaped, brown eyes. A guy could fall into those eyes and never want to come back.... He admired her figure for several seconds. Give it up, Daniels; she's work, not play. And besides, she's way out of your league, something inside him whispered. The flight continued, silent save for thedrone of the engines and the muffled conversation in the cockpit.

They Said WHAT????

Greetings, fellow Castaways.

Yes, it's been a while since you've seen anything new here on the Distant Shores. I can only apologize. There has been a bit of a maelstrom going on in the Keith Household lately, but to put it blunt, I simply missed some opportunities to post.

This week, I want to highlight some of the frustration I'm feeling with the general media. Call it liberal, call it conservative, call it an ostrich egg, labels no longer matter. Journalism is dead.

One case in particular highlights it: Ferguson, Missouri.

You notice it's always referred to as "The police shooting of an unarmed black teen?" You never see it as anything else. The newspapers, radio, television, nothing says anything different.

Now, I'm not making any judgement here. I'm not indicting Michael Brown, nor am I leveling accusation against the man who shot him. My job at this point is simply to highlight what the press has been doing that should enrage any reasonable person reading this. It has very little to do with the actual facts of the incident, and a whole lot with how it's being reported to us, who also were NOT there when it all came down.

First off, look at the entire scope of the incident. The news outlets rushed so fast to be the first to report the story, they never even stopped to ask what really happened. And why should they? "The police shooting of an unarmed black teen" fits right into the sensational, ratings-getting scandal-rag reporting that's become such a habit in the last fifty years. It also fits into the race-baiting agenda the press feeds on. So once again, the press never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

First off, "witnesses" at the scene, and media reports, said Michael was shot in the back. The coroner's report said he was shot all in the front.

Yes, Michael was unarmed But that doesn't make him harmless. What makes anyone think an unarmed man is somehow less dangerous than an armed one? Look at this video of what happened when a armed police officer pulled over an unarmed man for a traffic violation:

 "Unarmed" doesn't mean harmless, by any stretch. But of course, that's not what the press wants you to hear, so that fact slips through the cracks and falls to the editor's floor. The policeman who shot Michael was treated for injuries to his face and head, inflicted (possibly) by Michael Brown.

Someone has been lying to us. Who, is the question.

To look at a case of contrasts. How many of you have heard of Dillon Taylor? In case you haven't, here he is:

 


 Dillon was shot to death by a black police officer on August 28th, 2014. Micheal Brown was shot on August 9th, which should have made Dillon's story even more relevant. But for some reason, most press outlets chose to ignore Dillon and concentrate on Michael. So was Dillon's life less important because he wasn't black?

I don't care if you're black, white, or purple. A death is a death, and it's a crappy shame anyone has to die. But police officers are armed for a reason. One prime example is the North Hollywood Shootout:

As long as bad guys like this get hold of heavy weapons to rob, kill, and destroy, then our cops need to be able to handle them.

A cop has a split-second to make a critical decision when the situations goes fluid. He doesn't always make the right one, and that's a shame. But instead of questioning a cop's judgement, the press seems to have painted him as a cold-blooded murderer, and a bigot to boot.

So thanks to shoddy, irresponsible reporting, we've had several nights of rioting and looting, more people injured, businesses destroyed (not huge box stores with insurance like Walmart, but "mom-and-pop" stores which may never recover). We have race-baiters making this all about a white man killing a black man, supposedly because he's black. And we have a nation polarized even more because some people just can't stand the thought of Martin Luther King's dream coming true, that a man would be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And it seems to me, the ones screaming the loudest about racism in this country are themselves the most guilty by the the way they tell us their slanted little fairy tales.

So rather than joining in on the dogpile on a cop who may or may not have made the correct decision, Can we stand back from the conflict a little bit, long enough to sort through the actual facts, and not someone's snap judgement for the sake of sensational ratings?

Let's face it, ABC and CBS are too busy trying to beat NBC and Fox to care that what they report may in fact inflame the situation and cause more damage than would otherwise be caused if they would only back off on the rhetoric. And the talking heads get to sit back in their swivel chairs in front of the cameras and affect their self-righteous little scowls as all hell breaks out at their beck and call. And then they have the gall to play dumb and act like they're all so innocent, like there is no blood at all on their hands.




But we feed them, don't we? They poke our sensibilities, and we jump. It's a reflexive nerve they have found through  diligent practice, and they won't be letting it go any time soon, as long as they can exercise influence over their audiences through their propaganda. They specialize in character assassination and influence peddling.

But if we start questioning them, do you think we can start holding them accountable? The John Bowmans of the world?

It might be a good idea if we did.

Coming Soon to Print: Critical Mass!

Good day, fellow castaways.

It is with immense pleasure I announce to you that I've confirmed with  MuseItUp Publishing's rockin' editor-in-chief Lea Schizas, the coming print release of my third novel Critical Mass.

Now, I do appreciate everyone's patience in waiting, as the delay has been longer than what everyone involved was anticipating. But believe me, Lea has been working her little Greek tuchus off keeping up with a hundred different things, and she also was working hard getting our print books to compare in appearance and quality with the top-line editions on bookshelves (cause that's where we all dream of ending up, you know...well, not just on the store's bookshelves, but on readers' bookshelves, where they can be read over and over by awesome fans).

So, to celebrate the upcoming release (sorry, no firm date yet, but it's COMING, I promise!), I'm posting this, from Critical Mass (if ya wanna see more, click the book cover!):

BLURB:

Jenna Paine is a super spy, genetically enhanced to be more than human. Nadia Velasquez is a living weapon of mass destruction. When the secret organization who built them both decides they are no longer useful, two enemies are thrown together for the only purposes they could have in common: survival and revenge.

There's only one way out of The Pinnacle, and that's on a coroner's slab. Jenna lives through a treacherous attack vowing to exact her vengeance on the people who trained her to be the most deadly agent on the planet. 

Wounded and on the run, she turns to the man who's sworn to make her face charges for her involvement in The Pinnacle's nefarious schemes.

After years spent hiding from The Pinnacle, Nadia runs into the one thing she never counted on: Shelf life. As her body breaks down, she realizes it's only a matter of the short time she has left to redeem her existence and give her daughter a chance to live free.
In the final showdown, the two transhumans join forces against a common enemy, and The Pinnacle come to know the deadly significance of…

Critical Mass

 EXCERPT:

 It had been dark for some time. The rain had moved on, leaving the pavement
with a sheen that whispered with every passing car. Scud clouds overhead trailed
the thunderstorm like remoras behind their shark. The moon cast its wan light
between them, a pitiful challenger to the flickering neon of the street below.
The city’s diurnal population was at home and in bed. That left the nighthawks,
those who thrived in the hours between sunset and dawn. They worked, played,
lived, and loved in dark hours. And some of them died there.

The crowd at the Tap Tavern began to thin out about one in the morning. By
ones and twos, they filtered through the front door and into the street, fanning out
to home, to work, or to other purposes known only to them. By two o’clock, only
the closing crew remained, a couple of vague shadows moving beyond the frosted
glass of the large windows flanking the door.

A small brown coupe sat parked across from the alley mouth in the dark of the
early morning. Traffic was lighter now than it was at eight o’clock, but was still
busy enough to conceal the lone occupant seated behind the wheel. With stubborn,
unhuman will and deadly purpose, the figure waited for the rest of the lights to go
out in the tavern. At ten minutes after three, patience was rewarded. The glow
behind the picture window extinguished. A side door opened and shut, and a
shadow separated from the building and shambled down the alley.

The coupe’s door opened, and a compact, athletic figure emerged into the
dimly lit street. The young woman glanced both ways and trotted across, following
the figure up the alley. With silent skill enhanced by superhuman agility, she
sidestepped cardboard boxes and cats alike. Despite the deeper darkness, she could
see as if the way was lit by a full moon. Her hearing, finely tuned on top of her
superior talent, picked up every whisper of paper, every scuttle of tiny feet, every
rustle of a wing. She didn’t have to see her quarry; she should be able to hear him,
as long as he didn’t suspect—

Halfway down, she stopped. Something wasn’t right. She turned her head,
tuning, homing—there it was! Someone breathing—

He broke from behind a dumpster and took off at a dead run, scattering rats and
garbage across the wet pavement. Even with Jenna’s enhanced reflexes, he had a
modest lead before she could take up the pursuit.

Block after block he led, dodging and darting to avoid her grasp. But she
wasn’t that eager for a fight. Not yet. She would wear him down a bit first. She
changed her breathing to maximize endurance and followed for a while, not
catching up but not falling back, either.

He showed some gumption, that was for sure. That, and training. She gave him
a little more room to test his evasion technique, and no surprise, he showed her
some tricks that she already knew, most likely picked up from the same instructor.
She lost view briefly, twice, but picked him up again just as she had the first time,
flushing him like quail from a thicket. No human could have picked him up, but
Jenna was no human; she was better. The deadly chase went on, block after block.
The man breathed in ragged gasps as desperation overtook him. A hand clutched at
his side. There was no way he was getting away again.

An angry flash came over her at the thought of the betrayal that put them both
in this situation, and Jenna put on a burst of speed. After three years, every
suspicion was confirmed. This was the man who’d tried to kill them. Time to play.
Drawing a telescoping baton from her pocket, she caught up to him as he tried
to duck down another alley. He spun with a snarl, a hand darting for his pocket.
She closed in before he could draw his pistol, and went to work with the baton.
Jenna broke his wrist with the first blow, and the second knocked him senseless.
Stabbing out with her free hand, she grabbed his shirt and hauled him down,
dragging him into the shadows.

He lay panting, whimpering in pain and fear as Jenna brought her face down
close to his and hissed, “Let’s talk about Tahiti, Hamet.”

His eyes shot wide, and he began to gibber in a Middle-Eastern tongue. She
placed a knee on his broken wrist. His complexion paled and he fell silent, teeth
clenched in agony. “In English. I know who you work for.”

“I didn’t know it was you,” he blurted, a grimace pasted on his features. “None
of us knew. We just had orders—” He moaned as a spasm gripped his broken arm.
She grabbed it and gave it a light twist. She was rewarded with a howl as the man
bucked off the pavement.

She shoved him back down, brandishing the baton in his face.
“Orders from whom?”

“You know as well as I.” He moaned. “You get orders. You follow them. You
don’t ask questions.”

“Is that right?” She snapped the baton down on his hand. A satisfying crunch
echoed off the wall, accompanied by a shriek which was cut off by her wadded up
bandana.

It got worse before it got better. Jenna didn’t like that part of the job, but two
things drove her on: justice, and vengeance. Jenna had to find out why The
Pinnacle wanted one of their own dead, and Anna Spielberg deserved payback.
Now, after three years, she was damned well going to get it. Occasional shadows
drifted by the end of the alley, but at this hour and in this neighborhood, no one
was going to get involved.

Hamet was tougher than she gave him credit for. By the time she got the
information she wanted, there wasn’t much left of him. But the answers came.
They weren’t what she wanted to hear, but the truth needed to be told. When she
finally snapped his neck with a sharp twist from a rear naked choke, it felt anticlimactic.

The trail she’d followed on her own for the last three years had finally
come to its end. And with that end came the realization that Jenna had been trying
to avoid for longer than that. Not all was well with her employers.

There were divisions among the Council. Not on the surface, for outwardly
they still seemed to operate as united as ever in their cause for world peace. But
underneath the placid veneer were machinations and plots. Whispers of sabotage
and power plays chased each other through Jenna’s mind as she strode from the
alley and back up Seventh Avenue.

Somewhere in the power struggle, someone upline had made a mistake. They
issued a kill order on the wrong person, and not just because of who Anna was. Dr.
Spielberg had dedicated her life to the purpose of world peace. She saw it
happening within just a few more years. It wasn’t even that they tried to wipe out a
seven-year-old girl as well. Sofi was as harmless as they come, a sweet, shy little
thing with as much deadly potential as a pink frosted cupcake. Their worst mistake
was in messing with someone assigned to Jenna Paine’s protection.

As Jenna stalked away from the body, one thing hung in her mind: she would
find out who on the Council issued the kill order on Anna. And when she did, they
would face the full fury of a woman scorned.

Carpe Diem

 Greetings, fellow castaways.

Lately, doesn't it seem as though the world in general is becoming more miserable? Doesn't it look like Politics, News and  Social Media has devolved into a mire of agendas and bashing, of strife and turmoil? Just look at the kinds of posts you see on a daily basis. It's enough to make Marvin the Paranoid Android look downright peppy, in spite of the diodes down his left side.

In looking at the situation, (and touching on last week's post), I think many have lost track of their own story. Remember, Jesus told Peter to quit focusing on John's story and to just focus on his own

("What business is he of yours? You do what I'm telling you to do, and don't worry about John. So what if I make him live forever? It's not what I want you to concern yourself with.").

So now we have people who worry about how much money someone else is making and not about simply making their own ends meet, about how other governments treat their citizens and subjects while they themselves heap derision and insult on anyone who disagrees with their opinion or worldview, about what decisions parents make for their own children, and about how or wheteher a man may defend his home and family.

Of course, these folks know more than everyone else how much a man or woman shoudl be allowed to make for salary, and they're happy to share it with everyone else. They know how foreign governments (and our own) should be run, they know how to parent our children, and they of course know whether we deserve or need to own the means of defense for our homes. They know more about what other people in their neighborhood (or town/city) than they do about what happens in their own household. Doesn't that seem a little out of touch?

Rather than allow anyone to excel (and make someone else look/feel bad), they would rather take what the successful earn and give it to those they deem worthy or needing, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need"--Karl Marx. "No one gets a Cadillac until everyone owns a Prius."

I swear, some people just aren't happy unless they are offended at someone else. And we just let them drone on and on, and we all become less happy, more stressed, and more miserable because of it.

How about we all just back off and take a breath? I can see what you're all offended at. But may I ask what you've done about it other than spread some hateful Facebook Meme? Can you say that you've minded your own story at least once today? "What is 'my own story?' you may ask? What about the Greatest Commandment? "Love your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul and will, and love your neighbor like you love yourself." What about the Golden rule? "Treat others as you would have them treat you." What about what God requires of each of us? "Live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." Have you visited anyone in jail? Fed the homeless? Been a Big Brother to an orphan? I'd suggest that before you tell me how much I'm allowed to earn before you confiscate my wages, that you spend some time doing those things first.

Am I saying then that we should ignore injustice? That we should be passionate about nothing? God forbid! But we need to temper our passion with action, channel it to a constructive, not a destructive purpose. No man has ever been lifted up by tearing another man down. He only spreads misery. Lift up your friends, and even your enemies, and you lift yourself up as well. Honor every man more than yourself (by "man" I mean "mankind," not just the male of the species), and together we lift up and honor the whole, and become more honorable as a race. Can we do that?

One of the main themes of my series The NADIA Project is how we live our lives worrying about all the wrong things, failing to see what's right in front of us. What follows is an excerpt from Becoming NADIA that lays open the heart of the book (and you thought it was all about bullets and bodies, cases and conspiracies, didn't you? ;-) ).

I'll let you read it, and let that be my final statement on the matter. Let's all be about the business of our own stories, and let others work out their own.

Anyway, feel free to click the cover if you want to know more.

And enjoy the freebie.

Nadia walked north out of town on Hank's Lumber Road, skirting the upper lake on a
narrow, winding road that led up into the mountains around Klamath Falls. She breathed
deeply of the mountain air, refreshing her lungs as she stepped out, hands jammed in her
pockets. The aroma was clean, the air rich with life. She heard birds in the trees all around.
A bear snorted and shuffled across the road ahead, hardly giving her a second glance. A
gentle rain began to fall, and it wasn't long before Nadia began to feel the chill in her bones.

As she walked along, she wondered if the people who lived here appreciated the beauty
that surrounded them. She wondered if they woke up and simply went on with their lives,
not living each day to its fullest. How many people never heard the birdsongs in the trees,
never saw the sky painted with so many beautifully sad shades of watercolor gray? They
would call this dismal. They would write today off as dreary and depressing, and never
bother to look out their windows to see the beautiful, clear raindrops gathering like a million
tiny, silver-gilt diamonds on the leaves of the trees all around them. They wouldn't bother to
smell the clean scent of the air, feel the coolness in their lungs. How many never really
tasted the food they ate, or smelled the scent of the morning air in the mountains? How
many people never really felt the other people in their lives, never appreciated the love that
could be theirs? Deaf, numb, and blind, they existed only to exist. She took an extra deep
breath of cool, moist air and felt it cleanse her being. Breathing. They could start by being
thankful they could breathe, and enjoy every breath because it meant one more that they
could take. How many more breaths would she be able to call hers?

Here, even so close to the end, she was thankful. Thankful for the few real friends with
whom she'd shared time and laughs, thankful for this short time that she'd been given. At
least she'd known friendship; she'd known love.

If John Lives Forever

Greetings, fellow Castaways of Starship Earth.

Before reading on, I might recommend a glass of your favorite relaxant.

This world is full of grief, pain, and misery. Evil men in some places are going around hacking people to death in the streets. Others are killing their way across the country, killing woman, children and men alike for no other reason than that they desired to be free, to live in a place where they could determine their own destiny apart from a despotic tyranny set on ruling every aspect their lives. Children starve. People kill people. People kill animals. Did you know in India it's a common practice when a girl is born, to take her into the street and shove an unhusked rice kernel into her throat so she chokes to death?

 http://www.ibtimes.com/deadly-preference-male-offspring-killing-baby-girls-india-pakistan-1406582

My first point is, that anyone who wants to be offended by something only has to log in to Yahoo and read the headlines. And it seems that these days everyone is just begging to be offended. A company makes a corporate decision, and the world goes bonkers with rage, calling it "A War on Women." A cheerleader hunts, and people are screaming for her blood. Good people are enraged over injustices all over the world.

 

 Now, is it wrong to be offended by these horrible things going on? I might suggest not. "He has shown you, O man, what is good and what The Lord requires of you: To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your god." (Micah 6:8). But let me ask you if the responses flying around the internet are seriously warranted, or if the rage and vitriol everyone seems to be aiming around is a general over-reaction of a mob flogged up by a minority of trolls who are leaning back in their office chairs, laughing like fiends for all the trouble they are starting.

One thing I might suggest is that we all step back and take a breath before responding to what we may perceive as apparent injustice. One story that comes to mind is one where, after the Resurrection, Jesus was seen by the disciples as they went out one morning to fish.

Jesus took Peter off to the side and asked him, "Simon, Son of John, do you love me?" See, for the last three and a half years, he had called Simon by the name of Peter. But here, Jesus calls him by his given name. That was his way of getting Peter's attention: "Dude, stuff's gonna get real here."

After telling Peter what he expected of him from here on, Jesus gets up to leave. Peter notices John, "The disciple whom Jesus loved" hanging out and eavesdropping. So he asks, "Lord, what about him?" and here, Jesus says something  that stands out to me as key in today's world: "If I want John to live forever, what's it to you?"

In another passage, Paul tells us that each person needs to work out his salvation with God on a one-on-one basis. So your story is your story. What isn't your story, isn't your story.

Now I know it's easy to get worked up when we see news stories about the latest beheadings in Iraq, or when Congress can't get their stuff in one place. But look at this: What's your story, is your story. What's not your story, you need to drop and let go. You have enough stress as it is without worrying about something that's simply none of your business.

In other words, what you can do something about, do it. Give to humanitarian causes. Vote for the candidates you want in office without leveling accusations against men and women you don't know, based on information you're getting from paid trolls who just want to pour gasoline on a little coal to start a huge fire.

Honestly stop to pay attention to both sides of an issue. We used to do this when I was a kid. it's called listening to the other side, and giving them credit for having a stand as well, even if you don't agree. Usually, we found a good medium ground to stand together on, and we didn't forget our manners. It's all of our responsibility to get along with others in our culture.

Even if it means clamping our mouths shut for the time it takes to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt.

Internet Civilization?

Greetings and salutations, fellow castaways, and thank you for your patience. I have now  graduated three out of the four offspring from our illustrious and tradition-rich high school, and all the shockwaves are settling down to a steady, rolling sea instead of rogue wave city. And now, it's about time I got back to work.

Chapter Thirteen of Tempus Fugitive has now succumbed to my fingers and aching brow, and I am now only one year and six months past my (self-imposed) deadline for preparing the manuscript for the submission process.

But that's not what I want to talk about this week.

Lately, I have heard a record level of vicious howling and screaming on the Web over two particular issues: Big Game Hunting, and Hobby Lobby.

I don't need to weigh in on my opinions of either here, as Facebook has heard about all I need to say on these two points. What I want to call everyone's attention to is the way the Internet seems to encourage rage-baiting. And let's face it, it's about time we all sat down and took a personal inventory.

Because most of us, if not all, see ourselves as perfectly reasonable people.We honestly can't see wen we've crossed the line into hysteria, even when those around us cringe and run away.

Let's all agree before I go on that a society must be civil within itself in order to survive. I didn't say we all had to agree on all the same points, I said we all need to be civil with each other. Without civility, there is no discourse. Without discourse, there can be no agreement. Without agreement, there is no peace.

Now, let's look at "agreement" as a word, because to some it may mean something different. The World Book Encyclopaedia Dictionary says this: "1. To have the same opinion or similar opinions. 2.  To be in harmony; to be consistent; correspond. 3. to get along well together. 4. to say that one is willing; assent; consent. 5.  to make a bargain; come to an understanding. 6. (In inflected languages) to have the same gender, number, case, person, etc."

Look at all those different definitions. No wonder everyone is spending so much time screaming and threatening each other. To have the same opinion is not necessarily to be in harmony, nor does it mean we have to share the same opinions in order to get along. Definition 5 says it means to come to an understanding. I like that one, so let's use that from here in in my house (to be meant "here on my blog") from here on. I don't have to share the same opinion as you in order for us both to understand each other.

What we need to do is stop accusing each other. A cheerleader goes to Africa and legally hunts big game, and she's called a murderer. The Supreme Court decides a law violates another law (previously signed by a president of the party who's doing the most screaming about it), and all of a sudden the entire country is a theocracy. Parents teach their children from the Bible, and are being accused of child abuse.

People everywhere are crying, "what's gone wrong with our country?" I might suggest that the relative anonymity of the internet is at least partly to blame. We can now hide behind the comfort of our computer screens and usernames, and we no longer have to be accountable for what we say. I'll tell you what, some of the things that have been said to me in the last six months would have bought someone a quick punch to the mouth if they'd been said in person. I can only turn my cheek so many times until I run out of cheeks, folks.

So what I'd like to do here is introduce (or re-introduce) a concept known as the Personal Inventory. A personal inventory is something that should be taken every time we're engaged in a discussion. What it does is help us to see when we (meaning "I") need to steer the discussion back to more civil ground. If you find yourself doing any of these, you are probably too angry to have a reasonable discussion, and you need to take immediate measures.

1. ARE YOU TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS? You're screaming at the other person. Stop it. The same goes for speaking in a raised voice. If your voice is raised above the level you would use to order a steak from your favorite server at your favorite restaurant, you need to back off and take a deep breath.
2. Are you calling anyone else a name you wouldn't want to be called? Whether they are there to defend themselves or not, you are in the wrong on this.
3. Did your last statement include a personal threat? "She ought to have that gun shoved up her *** and the trigger pulled" is a threat. You have no business saying that to anyone else, or about anyone else. If so, you have forfeited the right to call yourself "civilized." They make the DELETE key for sentences like that. Feel free to use it. If you feel you MUST write it out, write it on a Word Document and save it in your hard drive only until you shut down for the night, and then send it to your recycle bin.
4. Did you just try to "mind read?" Here's my example: "Republicans hate women." Dude, get real. You aren't psychic enough to read every single Republican's mind and tell me with all honesty that all Republicans "hate" anything. The very statement in itself is idiotic and inflammatory. Did you seriously bother to ask any Republican if he or she hates women? I doubt it. "Democrats just want big government." That's another one too stupid to answer in one sitting. I don't know what every Democrat wants; I haven't asked them all. So don't tell me what I want, or who I hate, or what I'm for or against; I can tell you all of that myself.
5. Did you just exaggerate to make your point? Really, did you just stretch the facts just a wee bit? Stop it.

Now, after your personal inventory, which you should be doing with every post you make, if you find yourself stepping over the Civil Line, then erase your comment, take a moment, and try again, only this time show your counterpart in the conversation who the better person is by the respect you give them and their point of view.

Who knows, maybe we can all start getting along again?

Vanity of Vanities!

Good weekend, Fellow castaways.

First of all, I want to thank everyone for your patience while I work through some life things. Turns out having not one but two teenagers in two different high school sports tends to pull a person in many different directions, and those whom I've angered by not being where you wanted me to be, or have been waiting for a progress report on the latest WIP (That's Work In Progress, for you non-writers), I can only apologize. Keeping family commitments is what we have to put at the top of our priority list, at the cost of everything else. I could write a whole blog post on that, but it's another story.

Anyway, a question was raised on a previous post (See "To Pay or Not to Pay") about publishers who make more money from writers than selling books. So let me tell you about a couple of chapters from my journey to publishing, and maybe it will clear up some of the mud.

The term in question is "Vanity House" or "Vanity Publisher." These are houses that require a down payment from the author for services sometimes rendered, and sometimes not. What I mean is this: I submitted my manuscript to a certain publishing house whose leadership professed to being Christians, and used that as an indicator of their honesty.

Well, lo and behold, they sent me an acceptance letter a few weeks after I submitted to them, and I was happy as a pig in mud, I'll tell you. BUT there was this qualification: I mad "made it through the first round of acceptances." And all I had to do to make it through to final consideration was pay them three thousand dollars up front. Being a new, unpublished author, I was taken aback to say the least. I had no idea how I was going to come up with that amount.

BUT (I have a few of those, can you tell?) I was saved by a quick visit to a professional author's website (Okay, it was www.sfwa.org ), and learned that reputable publishing houses don't charge their writers a single penny up front. And that three thousand? That wasn't even to offset costs. It was "earnest money" to prove I was serious about being published! So how's that for the literary equivalent of a bear trap?

Another more famous story revolves around a book called "Atlanta Nights." You may have heard of it, maybe not. Anyway, nine professional fiction authors (top rated in their fields) decided they were going to call out one of the more well-known vanity houses (PublishAmerica). They came up with a premise, and decided to gang up on the worst book they could write. It was twenty-seven chapters long. Each author wrote three chapters, only having agreed on which part they would write. So the guy writing the end of the book had no idea what the guy who wrote the beginning even put down, and each one deliberately made it so horrible it would make any experienced reader's eyes bleed. I have a copy, and I still can't get through Chapter Four. It's that bad.

Anyway, without any further review, they submitted it to PA under the pen name Travis Tea (Play on words intended.) And guess what. It was accepted. Of course, PA ran it though their usual "meticulous" editing process (interpreted "not at all," but claiming they did), set it up in their market site, and priced it at their usual exorbitant rate, while not doing a lick of promotion for the author.

Of course, as soon as it hit the market, all the authors involved gleefully raised the BS flag and screamed "FOUL!" But to this day I see authors who are struggling to get out of their contract with PA (seven years, totally restrictive terms) only to be told they can "buy out" their contract for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. I personally know one such writer, whose horribly-edited book, priced at twenty-five dollars (for a paperback! ) has sold all of three copies from Amazon.

THESE are the stories that to me define a disreputable Vanity House: Hidden fees, services advertised but not rendered, exorbitant pricing of final product, charging fees for editing and cover art without being "up-front" with their expectations. This is what I mean by publishers who make more from authors than they do from book sales.

Now, I used to think there were self-publishing houses which were basically central points for indie authors to find cover artists and editing services at reasonable prices to put a book into print, or formatted for ePublishing. But now I'm not so sure.

There is a resouce for writers looking for publishing resources:
 http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/

Maybe there is some house out there which does provide a central contact point. But with Amazon's services being free (of course, they don't provide editing or cover art. Those will set you back for a professional product), it means authors still have a lot to think about.

But be careful out there. It's a twisted world.

In Memoriam

Good weekend, fellow castaways.

This is Memorial Day Weekend in the United States, a weekend of remembrance for those who not only placed themselves in the breach for freedom around the world (and here at home), but also lost their lives in defending it.

My books are almost all dedicated in some small or large part in honoring those who serve in military, police, and fire-fighting professions, because I feel strongly that there is no sacrifice greater than one's own life, and these people deserve our respect, our honor, and our thanks, whether they lived through their terms of service or not.

In my novel Critical Mass, I wrote an exchange between two characters that stands out to me as a statement at the heart of what I believe to be the mission of our men and women of the armed services. Here, I post it again, for the benefit and in honor of those whose blood has watered our Tree of Liberty:

*****

Jimmy sat on the porch, watching the dull routine of the afternoon in front of him. The air commandos not on guard sat in the shade of Nadia’s lawn for lunch, weapons within easy reach. Those on duty at the detention shacks stood their watches, ever vigilant against any attempted breakout. The occasional fly or wasp buzzed by, its hypnotic drone lulling the man in the wooden chair. The pain med Watts had given him was just starting to do its work, and the ache in Jimmy’s shoulder was finally at a tolerable level. But on the downside, that warm, sleepy feeling Jimmy hated so much was just beginning to creep in and steal the rest of his afternoon.

The old warrior’s eyes had just drifted shut when the screen door opened with a protest of springs. The steps on the porch were light and favored one side. The soft scent in his nostrils confirmed the identity of the other party. “Afternoon, Miss Paine,” he mumbled through the painkiller’s haze. Another smell, cool and yeasty, wafted to him and he held out a hand to receive the cold bottle offered, his eyes still closed.

He couldn’t resist his own grin at the smile in her voice. “You must have sonar, you old coot.” The chair next to Jimmy’s creaked as Jenna settled into it. She clinked her bottle against his and took a pull.

The first swallow went down good, so he took a second before speaking. “How’s the leg?”

“Better, thanks. A little stiff, but I can work with it.”

“Good. Wouldn’t want ya to miss out just ’cause ya got a little hitch in your git-along.”

“Jimmy, I wouldn’t miss this if I had a whole leg off.”

“Big deal, eh?

Jenna looked out at the yard for a while before answering. “They lied to me. I don’t like being lied to.”

“But do you still believe in what they want? World unity and Kumbaya, and all that crap?”

Jenna tensed and clenched her jaw at the offhand remark. “When you kill someone, what do you feel?”

Jimmy bristled at the question. “You’re kidding, right?” Feel? How the hell am I supposed to feel? What kind of stupid question was that?

Jenna’s eyes narrowed with passion. “I want to know what you feel when you pull a trigger and put a bullet into another person, and let their life spill out. In whose name did you do it? Yours? Your country’s? And how did it solve anything?” She looked away. “That wasn’t even enough, was it? You had to teach others how to kill, too. For a border. An imaginary line on a map.”

She paused long enough to take a swallow. “So before you label someone’s beliefs as ‘crap,’ just think about what it felt like every time you killed someone for that imaginary line.”

The hair stood up on Jimmy’s neck. I swear, if you were a man, I’d pin your ears back… As it was, there was no way he was going to let that one go. It had been a long time since he needed to shift into sergeant mode, but the shift was as smooth as his last class of recruits.

“Young lady.” He struggled through gritted teeth. “I didn’t kill anyone for a line. I killed to save an idea. That idea was that free men should be able to defend themselves from oppression and tyranny and help other men to live free as well. Them poor jackwagons who stood in the way of that idea were the ones I killed. And to tell you the truth, I don’t feel a damned thing for ’em. That line on the map you’re goin’ on about is the line that says, ‘on this side you’re free to choose your own destiny.’ And I’ll spill as much blood as I have to to make sure it stays where it’s at.”

Jimmy sniffed and set his bottle on the small table between them. “Look at you, giving me the ‘baby-killer’ speech. How many bodies have you left behind? Why don’t you tell me what you felt when you stood over the bodies of the people you laid out for a lie?”

He gave her a cold smile then and watched the steel in her eyes melt away. “I’ll grant you, hon, you ain’t any worse than me. But you sure as hell ain’t any sight better.”

Leaning his chair back, he said, “Now, I’d be willin’ to bet your vision for this earth ain’t too far from mine. We just ended up thinkin’ about it from some different places.” He fixed her eyes again with his. “I do know if I’d have had a half-dozen more of you on my team, we’d have buried less of our boys and more of theirs.”

Jenna broke her gaze away and looked across the yard. In the silence that followed, Jimmy imagined he could hear the gears working inside her head. He just hoped that, whatever she decided in the end about whatever it was she was pondering, it wouldn’t affect her edge when it came down to brass knuckles and billy clubs.

Things were going to get bad enough as it was.

********

In my research for Becoming NADIA, I came across the inspiration for men like Jimmy DeBartolo. General William "Wild Bill" Dean commanded the first American force rushed to Korea after the North Korean Army stormed across the border into the South and laid siege to Taejon. General Dean's actions in leading his men from the front earned him a Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award our country can give to its warriors. He was truly a soldier's soldier, and his men loved him as much as he loved them.

We must, in between the barbeques and picnics, take a moment to solemnly remember those who came back home in flag-draped coffins, whose lives were laid down not for glory, nor of pride, but for the concept that men should live free to make their own destinies. They weren't perfect, nor sinless, but they were the ones who stood in the breach for us. We owe them much more than we could possibly repay.

The Question: Part Three the Final.

Greetings once again, O fellow castaways, and thanks again for your patience.

This week, the third and final part of The Question.

We need to start at one point, and this is critical to understand: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE. That is just as important to understand  as the fact that "Old Marley was dead as a doornail." Anyone who tells you anything is impossible, knows nothing. Now, according to science, you say, some things are impossible. Iron does not float. You can't leap to the moon. Politicians always tell the truth. Dead men don't get up and live again. Science is fact, and science does not lie. Science, in fact by its nature, cannot lie.

Well, science cannot lie, and that's a fact. Science can't; scientists can, and do. But that's another issue. Back to science itself: C.S. Lewis (not a scientist, in acknowledgement to an argument put forth by one person in particular) said, "Science studies nature." Science has become very adept at predicting certain results and phenomena under certain conditions. For example, iron doesn't float. Well, that's not entirely true. Huge ships weighing several thousand tons are made of iron, and yet they float quite easily. Now, you say, that's cheating. Of course, if you distribute the mass of iron over a sufficient area such that it displaces a volume of water equal to its mass, it follows that iron can float. What about a cannonball?

 

 Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5D47nG9k4 (I never said anything about what liquid in which the metal could float, now did I?)

What about the leap to the moon? Okay, give us rockets. That's one hell of a leap accelerator. The politician thing, no one has an answer for yet. I'll grant you that one.

Now, here's the other shoe: As I said above, Science studies nature. Science has become very adept at predicting certain results and phenomena under certain conditions. Those "conditions" also assume that no outside forces are acting upon the result. Hence the term "supernatural," as in "acting or behaving in a way that supersedes nature."

NOW we have a game-changer. We also have something that will NOT be duplicated in a controlled environment. Let's say we go bowling. You roll a ball for a perfect strike, right down the lane. Perfect trajectory, perfect momentum, perfect spin. Your release is flawless, and the ball rolls happily down the lane on its way. But then the lane attendant hits a button, and the bar comes down in front of the pins. The ball gets deflected by this outside force, introduced at someone else's caprice, and the strike never occurs. "Stop that!" you yell, and he nods and waves as the gate rises once more into its place above the lane. So you roll again, and just to be contrary, the attendant hits the button again. This "outside force" is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and has a direct effect on the outcome of the sequence of events.

Let's apply this factor to the question of miracles. Point 1.) Is it possible to prove a negative? In other words, can one say with certainty there is no God? Remember, I said, nothing is impossible. Therefore, by my own argument, it should be possible to prove the nonexistence of God, and I'm not talking philosophically. I mean in a real, scientific way.  I might say one could, and here's how: Star with a box of finite dimensions. Make it as big as you want. Let's start with 10 feet on a side. Now climb inside your box and close it off. You are now the only living thing in that box, right? Wrong. There is you, and all the bacteria and dust mites and whatnot that live on you, as well. But is God in that box with you? Maybe, maybe not. The only way to tell would be determined by your awareness of all things in that box, in every corner, on every side, at once. That way, God can't dodge away and hide somewhere behind a flap or something when your focus is somewhere else.

Now, make that box as big as you want: a mile on every side, a hundred miles, a thousand miles, a million light-years, it doesn't make a difference. The only way you could prove beyond doubt that there is no God, is to know and be aware of every single point in the universe simultaneously. That would make you omniscient and omnipresent. Why, to do that, you would have to be omnipotent Hey, aren't those the attributes of God? That could be some dangerous territory, Bruce Almighty.

So I think you owe me this: 1.) There is a possibility that there is a God. 2.) It follows, then, that if there is a God, that he could be omni-scient, omni-potent, and omni-present. 3.) It follows now that if there is a God, and  this God person is omni-omni-omni, then this He/She/It just may choose to act, within His/Her/Its range of ability and judgement, to act upon certain situations for His/Her/Its own benefit or the benefit of others, am I correct?

Now, back to The Question: Jesus was a Jewish man from Galilee in Israel who lived in the first century of our current calendar era. He was put to death by Pontias Pilate in Jerusalem and laid in a stone tomb, where the body hung out for a period of time exceeding twenty-four hours. I say that because there are some who choose to pick nits over how long he stayed in the tomb. Let's stick to basics, folks.

Anyway, a guard contingent of armed men (most likely Romans, because crucifixion was reserved for political crimes against Rome, and so this was an execution under Roman jurisdiction) was posted to make sure he stayed put. By many accounts, on a certain morning, the tomb burst open from inside, and Jesus walked out, not only alive, but thriving. Statements from the time indicate that he was seen by up to five hundred people at once.

Of course, these are the biblical accounts. Now doubters would say his followers overcame the guards and stole the body, and claimed he rose from the dead. Okay, let's go with that for a while. These are not stupid people. If a dozen bikers started saying Papa Guardado was raised from the dead, what would any reasonable person do? How about say, "Let's see him!" "Well," they say, "He's not here right now. He just left." Yeah, right. So how did the Twelve convince anyone with a lick of sense that Jesus came out alive from the tomb? No risen Jesus, no resurrection.

Again, if there was no resurrection, why did no one search for the body or question his followers? No man would die for what they know to be a lie, especially when plied by a Roman lector with a scourge for any period of time. Why would they do that? So obviously, we have a dozen or so men at least, who were convinced as sure as I breathe, that Jesus was raised from the dead. They began to preach that as truth, and the matter began to catch momentum. If you torture ten men, one of them will talk. That's a plain fact. And at this point, everyone in that area had a vested interest in making sure Jesus stayed dead. The Romans wanted peace in their conquered province. The Jews wanted the Romans to leave them alone so they could live their lives. All they had to do was break one of the followers to show them where the body was taken.

So, a group of men and women claim they saw Jesus back from the dead. No one interrogates them? No one says, "Hey, here's his body; they lie!" What credibility could they possibly have had to influence history in such a long-reaching way? How about a risen Jesus?

That's why I believe. Not just because someone told me. I looked into it myself, and my questions were answered to my satisfaction. This of course didn't just jump up and bite me out of the blue. There was a series of supernatural events that led up to my final inward knowledge of "Yes, that was the way it happened."

The last part of The Question is this: What do you do with knowledge like that? For a lot of folks, it's changed their lives. I know it's changed mine.

So I guess that's it. You can do two things here: believe it yourself, or not. You're free to choose, and that's the beauty of it all. I'm not your judge, any more than you are mine. Next week, we'll be on to another point of discussion. Till then, be well.

The Question: Part Two

Greetings, O fellow travelers on Starship Earth. I apologize for the staggered spacing of my recent posts; I have one teenager in track, and another in softball, and I will not let my children go through a season without seeing their Dad on the sidelines, cheering them on.

Last week I opened the box.

I'm a man of faith, and a man of logic. They don't conflict, and we're working through the questions that used to bug me, until I found the answers. Because it isn't enough to believe. Understanding why one believes is crucial to a faith, otherwise you're just following a religion. And yes, there is a distinct difference between religion and faith.

Now, there does come a time when someone in whom I have implicit trust does ask me to just take their word for something. And if they have a proven record, I don't feel bad about simply believing. You're not an idiot for taking the word of someone who has never let you down, no matter how outrageous the claim. That's the difference between belief and dogma.

My faith centers around the three day time span that literally changed the world. Last week, I presented historical evidence for the existence of the man Jesus of Nazareth. Now, I'll tell you this: Very few honest historians will tell you they doubt that he walked the earth during the period of about 4BC and 33AD. Tertullian, Pliny, Josephus, and hundreds of others wrote about him as a real person within just a few years of the events in question. As they say, the amount of evidence is simply overwhelming.

The next concept that we need to discuss centers around the reported death of Jesus. Just like Dickens' A Christmas Carol, it must be distinctly understood that Jesus was dead, or nothing wonderful can come of the story that follows. Because if Jesus was not crucified on the cross and died, then there was no resurrection. As Paul says, "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." So I will freely admit, if there was no death, and no resurrection, I'm nothing more than a fool in serious trouble for my past, and worse than a fool for teaching hopeless lies to my children.

So of crucial importance is the point that Jesus was "as dead as a doornail." For this, I'm going to detail about what the men who were with him observed. I believe the biblical record is accurate, not just because it's "the biblical record," but because of the events and phenomena observed, as well as the manner in which they were related.

We have to remember that of the twelve apostles who were the closest to Jesus, almost all were fishermen by trade. Illiterate, uneducated. There was Matthew the tax collector, and a couple of revolutionaries who belonged to the group called Zealots. We don't know what education they received. I think we can assume Matthew could probably read and write, but he was basically an accountant. The only physician listed in the new testament was Luke, who was a disciple of Paul.

All the synoptic gospels agree Jesus was arrested, flogged, and sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate. This is also confirmed in Tacitus' record  that he was put to death under Tiberius' reign.

They started with a simple beating, playing a game popular among rough men. They blindfolded him and struck him with their fists, saying "Who hit you?" This wasn't a love tap; they punched him. Then they started in with canes before taking him to Pilate for judgment. Pilate sentenced him to flogging.

Flogging was accomplished with a tool called a flagellum, similar to a cat-o-nine tails. It was a whip with a short, stout handle and a series of tendrils made of woven leather. The end of each was wrapped around a metal ball, a shard of pottery, or a steel barb. The victim was tied around a whipping post by the wrists and flogged with this whip for a set number of strokes. Every strike would result in severe contusion, or a cut, or both, and often skin and meat would come off with the tendrils. Depending on the number of stripes administered, a flogging could easily become a death sentence in itself. The records available cite thirty-nine stripes with the flagellum were laid across Jesus' back before he was led out to be crucified. He was so weak, they had to draft a man from the crowd to carry his cross-beam for him, because he was too weak to carry it himself. Shock and blood loss were already beginning to take their toll on the man.

Any medical professional can tell you, shock is as deadly as any wound. The blood vessels to the brain contract and narrow in a reflex that is supposed to make the victim sleep and recover from an injury. But in many cases, the vessels shrink too much, and the person never wakes up again. I broke my arm in gym class in the seventh grade, and went into shock from the blow. My vision closed in to a tunnel, and I had no idea what I was saying. And that was nothing compared to a flogging at the hands of a Roman lector.

Crucifixion was introduced to Rome by the Assyrians. The Romans took the technique and refined it as an art of inhumane murder. Crucifixion was a death sentence, plain and simple. The victim was stretched out just a little short of an arm's length on the cross-beam, and nails driven through the wrists. Then the cross-beam was hoisted and fastened onto the upright via a dado cut into the beam. At that point, the victim's feet were stacked one on the other, knees slightly bent, and a third spike driven through the tops of the feet and out through the heel. The victim was suspended in a position where, in order to inhale, he had to push himself up on the bottom spike to get slack on his arms. In order to do that, he had to put pressure on his wounded feet, and then sag back down to hang from his arms. He could exhale like this, but not inhale.

Jesus' blood pressure would have spiked during this ordeal to incredible levels due to stress and shock. He was already well on the way to death soon after being mounted thus. Now, remember, the idea was to keep him there until he was dead, and there was no way he was coming down alive. I'll admit, the Jewish leaders at the scene were concerned about finishing the job before the Sabbath. But there was no rush; this was now a matter for Rome. To mollify the priests, however, the soldiers went along and broke the legs of many of the criminals crucified along with Jesus that day. What that did was hasten their deaths by inhibiting their ability to raise up to breathe. The aim of crucifixion is suffocation, after all. But when they came to Jesus, they didn't break his legs, believing him to be dead already.

Now, this is where the description gets interesting. John said a soldier ran Jesus through with a spear, "and blood and water flowed." This is important, because an uneducated fisherman like John took this to be a supernatural sign. It wasn't a miracle at all, but a phenomenon that occurs in cases of suffocation. The blood begins to separate and settles in the chest cavity in a way that a stab wound releases blood, and then water, in large amounts. So what happened was not a miracle as John supposed, but a confirmation that Jesus was indeed dead.

What happened next was the body was wrapped tightly in linens soaked in spices and oils, and then laid on a stone bench in a tomb donated by Joseph of Aramithea, one of the Jewish leaders and s secret follower of Jesus. The stone was rolled in front of it, and a guard set. These were either Roman legionaries or temple guards. The leaders asked for a Roman guard, but there is some debate over whether there was actually a squad of Romans or a contingent of the Temple guard assigned to guard the tomb. The reason was to make sure none of his followers could steal the body and claim a resurrection. In either case, a squad of armed men stood watch day and night.

According to most accounts, Jesus' followers were too busy hiding from the police to worry about staging a false resurrection, and besides none of them understood that there was supposed to be a resurrection in the first place. Besides, they only had two swords among them, and only one of them at that point was a trained fighter (Simon the Zealot). I suppose someone with some real creative force, plenty of time to plan, and some determination could have overpowered an armed squad of soldiers. But let's cover that in next week's post. The point I'm trying to make here is that Jesus was dead when he went into that tomb.

Some skeptics say he was only in shock, in a short-term coma, and that he managed to unwrap himself after reviving in the tomb from the shock of the cold bench on which he was laid. Okay. Let's say that a man scourged thirty nine times, beaten within an inch of his life, crucified and ran through with a spear, the body already in a state where fluids were settling and separating, had the strength, after three days lying unattended on a cold stone bench, to undo wrapping cloths impregnated with sticky, tar-like myrrh, and then roll a tombstone weighing in the neighborhood of half a ton from its place, overpower a contingent of armed guards, and convince thousands of people he was supernaturally raised from the dead.

I'm a big fan of Occam's Razor: Don't overcomplicate things unnecessarily. That doesn't mean totally ruling out anything. We cannot operate from the assumption that we live in a closed system, that there is no God, and miracles cannot occur. You can live there if you want; I've seen too much to accept that as final fact. We also cannot operate under the assumption that there's a fairy under every bush, or that Bigfoot was last seen walking hand in hand with Elvis. We take matters under open advisement pending evidence or proof of their verity or falsehood. That's called "keeping an open mind." Some of you may want to try it sometime; you may end up receiving happy surprises.

We'll get to the rest of my point later. For right now, we have only two conclusions to make here: That he was dead went he went into the tomb, or he wasn't. The most likely conclusion is that he was in fact dead. We have eyewitness accounts from two men who were there (Matthew and John), one account dictated second hand (Mark was Peter's translator), and one account written by a man who did a fair amount of research on his own within a few years of the facts in question (Luke, who wrote: "Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."

In other words, the guys who were there said he was dead. Who am I to argue, just because I think something is impossible from my limited experience?

Next week, we'll look at the Final Question. Till then, be well and keep safe.