Vote today--you matter!

I believe that with all my heart. Each one of us matters. Our choices matter. Our thoughts matter. Our dreams matter. And in America, our votes matter! I'm proud to live in a nation with free elections and term limits that protect us from dictatorships and tyrrany. This country was formed out of adversity by inspired men and women who believed in freedom and justice, and believed that they mattered. For them, it wasn't just a vote. It was a battle...a war. Families were divided then like they are now, with some on one side of the fence, and the rest on the other. Though it's important to stand up for our values and our rights, it's equally important to remember as C.S. Lewis said,

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."
--C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.

More important than our candidate winning this election is that we keep our affection for all, whether or not we agree with them.

While searching for the above C.S. Lewis quote, I found countless others and am sorely tempted to post them all. Here are a few:

"Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position." -C.S. Lewis
YES ON 8 FOR CALIFORNIA--for traditional marriage and whole families.

"Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it." -C.S. Lewis
Kind of puts the fire under ya, doesn't it?

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream." -C. S. Lewis
I love this truth. It gives me hope for my authorial goals.

And on that note, I'll update you on my writing:

Guardian Covenant is set aside for now, with a running list of inconsistencies and revisions-to-be-made tallying up as my kind early readers give me priceless feedback. A comprehensive revision will be done once I have all that feedback.

The Mind Traveler is in progress with nearly forty pages completed. Part of me feels like I'm starting out too slowly. Another part feels I'm getting ahead of myself with the action. Either way, I am having fun writing Eric's story. He is hopelessly conflicted between craving acceptance and affection--and needing to be true to himself. After attending a lecture at a seminar on fringe neurology, he's wondering if mind travel is the answer to his depression. The idea of disciplining his mind to the point of total control promises to free him from unfettered, desperate emotion. He believes mind travel can cure his sorrow, repair all that has gone wrong with his life. As he learns more about it, he's eager to dive in before he understands all the perils and traps of his own mind. Though he's been warned, he jumps into the expanse of his imagination and finds a world he didn't expect...a place much like the world he abandoned for this one. And that's where even I don't know what will happen next.

The way this project started out is not where it seems to be going now. It was meant to be a twist on time travel, but based on the principles of hypnosis and belief. Now, it's much more complex. It started when I set out to write Professor Astor's lecture entitled “The Neurological Evidence of Mind Travel and its Implications on Human Evolution by Professor William Astor.” I wrote it in the form of an expository essay, seeking out points of evidence, but keeping it abstract for a wider readership and accessibility. He's my own personal mad scientist, kind of the voice within me that attracts me to science fiction in the first place--the dramatic possibility and superhuman, supernormal theory. Ah, I love it. It doesn't replace reality to me, but extends it. That's how I write it for Eric, too. He's intrigued by the idea of elective evolution based on intense mental discipline. Of course, his primary motive is escapism. His life has come to a devastating low, and he's faced with the reality that nobody understands him enough to love him truly, madly, deeply as he--and every human--craves.

Through mind travel, I intend for him to discover his worst nightmares, and to face them. In facing them, he will learn their antidotes. Of course, an added element of suspense will be the reader's fear that Eric won't be able to come out of his self-imposed coma or worse, that once he discovers the heaven in his own mind, he won't want to.

This will be a book for all the escapists out there like me who have, at one point or another, preferred an alternate reality to their own, and discovered once and for all that this reality is infinitely more beautiful when embraced.