Not about him, but to him or her or any other way in which we think of ourselves?

We know it reveals glimpses to others, but what does self-analysis of the words we put on paper whisper back to us? I don't write as therapy, but from the joy of learning and sharing and constructing stories, in short, as someone who has things I want to say and finds meaning for myself in putting those things on paper whether someone reads them or not.

With 30 feature screenplays under my belt and diving headlong into my third novel, my themes seem to always be about people being worse than what we make up, more terrible than Vlads or Mr. Hydes or even the Hannibal Lectors, but also about a world populated with people better than we can imagine.

But now I realize I not only write with some modest talent for violence, but about death. Which is a bit strange as I'm sure I've only been dead a couple of times. Ha, just kidding. Maybe only once that I know of.

So where does this obsession come from, and can I really expect others to come along for the ride? And can I be okay if they don't?

I can only promise myself, and for those who come on the journeys with me, to keep exploring what makes us dark and detestable and that which makes us radiant and utterly fantastic. My stories, like this post, will maybe not follow any particular convention but will be, to the best of my abilities, explorations into what makes us human.

Yes, this post is rambling a bit. My fumbling for understanding, and by letting you in, that audience of maybe only one who might actually read these words, to hold myself accountable. As I'm only now discovering these things about myself, to remind myself in the future to look back, to not let myself off the hook.

60,000 words are currently spread over three different stories—sequels to LOOP and BLACK FIRE awaiting more research—and now, up as my daily obsession, SUPER NINJA.

A silly title maybe---but a title and an idea that started 30 years ago as a screenplay and secured a 3-picture deal as actor and writer with the legendary film producer Menahem Golan. And though he passed away some time ago, it's a story now demanding to be put on paper. I promise it will be as intense and approached with as much respect for myself and an audience as anything else I'll ever write.

This passage, somewhere at the end of the beginning, is what started this rant. Of course it's early days, so it may change or disappear entirely, but with luck and lots of hard work ahead, the rest will follow before the end of the year.

***


Nash could find no reason to fight, had no will to resist, no strength to deny the inevitable. Maybe he was still lying on the dank jungle floor on the steep slopes of Phu Si Lung. Maybe nothing from these past 10 years existed at all. He floated toward the ceiling, lighter than a feather, but was then dropped into the gelatinous oil. His hyperactive senses faded quickly; maybe the drug was finally processed and leaving his system. He saw the burning lab for what it was, the men as they really were, and the monster they called Angel.

Their eyes found each other until Nash was pushed down under the thick oil. Light became black and then something new, a darkness only the dead could know.

He gagged and felt the burning liquid enter his lungs. Eons… moments… the agony of death, beyond anything he’d known, burst white hot somewhere deep in his brain. Bolts of lighting raced along hundreds of miles of nerves in a single instant, fused the gap between each synapse, then sputtered and dimmed.

He floated. Had time to wonder what happened next. He’d done his best but he didn’t deserve heaven, he was sure of that. The fiery lab and the dozens of dead bodies and monsters were only a glimpse of the hell he would face for all eternity.

Somewhere in the glimpses of life flashing by at infinite speeds and the chemical reactions of a body shutting down down, Captain Steven James Nash, son of John and Nicole, the first love of Samantha Lynn Carpenter, decorated then forgotten commander of the Ranger’s covert special operations group Vipers, found peace.

As the body that had once been the man floated in darkness, his soul gathered itself and waited for what was to come.

And then he was gone.