Winning

Charlie Sheen made the word, “Winning” famous, but I’m not sure he actually won anything when he did so. Controversy and outrage, sure, but though his victory may have been a personal success I think it fell short of the financial and moral mark. Fortunately, I’m not here to write about Charlie Sheen! Instead let’s talk about success in general. Not necessarily in a self help kind of way, but littered with examples. I don’t think of it as success or winning, but rather hard work.

I’ve mentioned in recent articles how I was reading the book, Total Recall, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s not the movie, it’s a book about his life and his successes (and opportunities for improvement). I finished it and was moved and amused by the ending, where he gives 10 tips for success in life. I found that I already use all of them and figured them out on my own, so yay me!

The moving part, to me, was a picture where he and his son, Patrick, visit Graz, Germany for the unveiling of a bronze statue of him in his glory days of bodybuilding. The look captured on his face as he reached out to touch it is what got me. Can you imagine having a statue built to commemorate you for the positive things you’ve done? You can see that he’s deeply affected by it in the picture and I can’t say I blame him. How awesome would that be?

His other secrets to success? Reaching for the stars, applying humor to everything possible, and understanding that nothing just happens for the sake of happening (or as he puts it, reps, reps, reps). Those of us in the weight lifting field understand reps to mean you have to do something over and over to improve. Want a heavier bench? Do lots of reps bench pressing. Want better shoulders? Lots of reps at shoulder pressing. Better legs or butt? Reps at squatting. By now you see the pattern. Each rep brings you closer to the goals you set for yourself, but reps applies in other ways as well.

In Arnold’s book he talks about acting and preparing for scenes, especially scenes with stunts. They practice the stunts over and over to make sure they get them right and nobody gets hurt. More reps. His speeches he gave during his term as Governor of California and for other press conferences he practices over and over. Reps. Learning to be a good skier (even though he once broke his leg while skiing) requires practice and reps. Everything you want to be good at, whether you enjoy it or not, requires reps.

I can appreciate that. Not just because I lift weights myself, but because that’s what I do. I’ve published 30+ books, that’s a lot of reps of writing, editing, re-writing, re-editing, and so on and so forth. I’m getting pretty good at it, so good that my most recent finished rough draft of a full novel (Soulmates, book 3 in my Dark Earth series) took me 8 days to write, start to finish. It was a fun story but I don’t expect them all to be that quick. I also recently obtained my Security+ computer certification. In order to prepare for that test I did some studying and then lots of reps taking practice tests. My daughter has to read books every night for school and do other homework with math problems. Reps for her.

So clearly practice is what makes perfect, although perfection in anything is a goal we can never reach.

The other thing I took away from the book, aside from being educated, entertained, and impressed was that it’s only his side of the story. There are a lot of other stories that are untold. How did the Governator’s close friend, Franco Columbo, feel being in Arnold’s shadow his entire life (both because he almost always placed behind Arnold and because Arnold is so much taller than him)? What about the people he villainized in his pursuit of climbing to the top? The women he admits he treated unfairly in his earlier days of acting when he didn’t know any better? What about Maria Shriver, and the pain and humiliation she must live with every day for his admittedly foolish betrayal of her and their marriage vows? In his climb to the top he stepped on a lot of people.

Is winning worth the price? Can it be washed away by looking back and saying, “I’m sorry?” I certainly don’t want to cast a negative light on the guy. Heck, I’ve looked up to him since I was a little kid that stumbled across a TV version of Conan the Barbarian. I’d argue that his transgressions and offenses over the years aren’t that bad. He’s made mistakes, we all have. The only really big one, in my opinion, is the infidelity. Everything else comes with being human.

Or, as Nathan Fillion once said as Captain Malcolm Reynolds in an episode of Firefly (Jaynestown), “It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of a son of a bitch or another.”

I’m happy to be a writer. People buy books based on what they like. If they like my books more than somebody else’s then they’ll buy mine first. If they don’t then they’ll buy the other book first, but when they finish it they’ll come back and look at mine. Either way it’s a winning situation and nobody gets hurt, stepped on, or screwed over. I love helping other writers with whatever suggestions or tips I can too. It’s my way of trying to give back or give forward, depending on the situation.

Writing reminds me of lifting weights in many ways. It’s not a competition against other people. It’s a competition against myself. I want to write better every time, just like I want each workout to be better than the last. The difference is that with writing I can keep improving year after year. With lifting there will come a time when the gains will become less about putting more weight on and more about taking less weight off. The goal is to be healthy and as strong as I can be though, and the competition is against myself not against anyone else.

I don’t care if I’m the best. My records aren’t about beating anyone other than myself. As long as I can hold my head high and support myself and my family I’m winning. That’s good enough for me.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

My Pants Are On Fire!

Back around 2004 I held the match used to light a fire under my own ass a little to close. I haven’t been able to put the flames out since. No, there’s no burning sensation when I go to the bathroom, it’s all about motivation and self-discipline.

I received a Christmas present from my wife and kids that seems a little funny. It was a book. A giant hardcover book. I write books, what do I need to read one for? Not only that, but I’m a huge proponent of ebooks, what’s this boat anchor doing on my desk? First and foremost, a writer that does not read is a writer doomed to obscurity. Secondly, it’s no simple task to get somebody else an ebook for a gift. Oh sure, it can be done, but I think that Amazon needs to come up with a way to make it a simpler process.

So what book was it and how does this have anything to do with my pants being on fire? The book is Total Recall. It has nothing to do with freeing Mars from an oppressive regime (nor does it involve Colin Farrell). Total Recall is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography. So far I’m only about a third of a way into it, but that’s due to lack of opportunity, not lack of interest.

I grew up in rural Michigan. No, not on a farm. Yes, I grew up learning to shoot guns and we ate the larger furry critters for dinner when we could. We had electricity and modern conveniences, though I was eternally upset that we couldn’t get cable TV and in those days a satellite dish was outrageous. So I read and watched movies and found ways to go outside and entertain myself (see the aforementioned “shooting things”). About the age of 8 I stumbled across a movie on network television called Conan the Barbarian that my dad was watching. I was instantly mesmerized. As soon as I could I had him rent the unedited version on VHS tape (it may have been a few years until VHS was available, come to think of it). Then sometime later I bought the tape and watched it again and again, as well as the sequel, Conan the Destroyer.

I loved fantasy, so that wasn’t surprising that I’d take to those movies. It was more than that though for me. I felt the story and I connected with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had it good compared to him, but I didn’t know that. I was a stupid kid who thought he lived a miserable life. Nevertheless, I was sucked in and eventually ended up owning all of his movies on VHS that were available. These days I still have several of them, but they’re on DVD. And yes, there are couple of real stinkers in the group, but you take the good with the bad.

I read up on the guy over the years and followed him as best I could. What a story he had, it was something the best of fiction writers couldn’t make up. Or, if they did, nobody would dare to believe it. A poor Austrian kid that managed to rise to the highest level of athletics, international stardom, and even land the position as the governor of California? Who does that? Whether you agree with his beliefs or like him or not, I think everybody alive has to respect his accomplishments.

And now, reading his autobiography, I feel a lot of things clicking for me. Of course the book is a matter of hindsight and I’m sure he’s remembering and portraying only the more positive things in his life. He mentions a few mistakes here and there, but this guy is a salesman – he knows how to put a spin on things. Even so, the drive and the way in which he set goals and worked towards them leaves me with warm fuzzy feelings. If he accomplished all that he did using his methods, it makes me excited about my own future. I woke up in 2004, so to speak, and stopped being lazy. I went back to school not because I wanted to, but because I needed to in order to accomplish the goals I set for myself. I got back into working out and not only improved my health, but I won some powerlifting contests and set a few state records (that have since been beaten). I took my writing seriously and was picked up by a small publisher, then I launched out on my own and started my own publishing company with the help of a friend. My books are doing better than ever these days and I hope one day down the road they’ll hit the point that I can make writing my one and only profession.

I have no interest in politics or acting, but I have a lot of things left I want to accomplish. Reading Total Recall is reaffirming my drive and letting me know that somehow I may have stumbled across the path to success. I compare it to working out – no matter what the routine is or who the trainer is, each weightlifter is different. Each body is different, and only by discovering for yourself what works and what doesn’t can the optimal growth be achieved. I still lift some pretty damn heavy weights even though I don’t compete anymore because I know that’s what my body needs. I know it’s the same level of hard work and dedication that’s necessary some times to write through a tough part in a book or to get through learning the next technology I need to master in order to finish my next project at my day job. It’s about setting goals, working hard, and not making or accepting excuses.

And maybe, one day, I’ll be able to write a book like Total Recall that people will be interested in. I doubt it – I have no interest in celebritizing myself, but I learned long ago to never turn away from an opportunity!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

 

The Ultimate Zero Calorie Desert

This article has nothing to do with food. I apologize to all the sweet-craving and fad-diet mongers out there, but read on anyhow, you might like this. This is about persistence and setting (and achieving) goals. And it’s about picking up heavy things. What about writing? Well it applies there too, just read on to see why.

I used to be a competitive powerlifter. Back in 2009 I suffered a catastrophic injury that made my world come crashing down around me. I ripped my left pectoral muscle off of my left arm during one of my final training sessions for a powerlifting meet. A month later I had surgery and was told I would never bench heavy again. Even worse was that I was moving in another month after surgery, so I wouldn’t be able to go through insurance-based therapy. That meant I had to put my own therapy program together at my new home in Utah. I couldn’t just give up lifting – part of who I am is centered around being a big and strong guy. I had to find another way.

I can’t say whether my version of therapy was better than a licensed physical therapist’s or not, but I do know that I started lifting seriously six months after surgery. I’d been doing all sorts of other exercises up until that point to try and teach my body how to use the reattached muscles and build up supportive strength as well as shore up the reattached tendons and connective tissue. Within eight or nine months of my surgery I was back up to 90% of my previous strength as far as my upper body was concerned. I’d also gotten my lower body strength back up to my previous competition best.

It’s been a couple of years since then now and life complicated things by getting really busy. Recently I’ve redoubled my efforts in the gym and I’m happy to say I’m back up to where I peaked post-incident. As a matter of fact I’m even reaching new personal bests when it comes to my lower body strength. I’ve accepted I’ll never bench press what I once did, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not hoping to trick my body into working its way up there again!

The moral of story is one of persistence and setting realistic goals. Sure, maybe one day I’d like an impossible dream, but that’s not a realistic goal. It doesn’t mean it won’t or can’t happen, it just means I have to break down the path and create smaller goals along the way that are achievable. Like the tortoise and the hare, success for 99% of us is achieved through hard work and determination. Whether it’s benching over 400 pounds of learning to surf with one arm, there are examples all around us of people that have done what somebody said was impossible. And if one person can do it, than so can I and so can you.

What does all that have to do with desert? Simple, after each achievement I’ll look back and have a warm and fuzzy feeling not so different from a great piece of cheesecake (or whatever favorite desert). I’ll know I accomplished what I went after and I never failed something because I didn’t try or work hard enough for it. And when I’ve done all I can do and the end is near I won’t have any regrets for things I didn’t try. I think that’s more fulfilling than any combination of sugar and flavors. And who knows, if the goal is lose a little weight than maybe basking in that triumph helps keep the calories off too.

How would this apply to writing? That’s easy too. Setting goals applies to everything in life. My goal is to be a successful writer. I’m doing okay right now, but nowhere near good enough to hit the numbers I need. I’m trying different things to make that happen, from some marketing and promotion – including a three month promo campaign I just started on Monday (which I’ll share the results of as I get them. Ultimately my path to writing success involves writing though. I just keep on writing more books. Life has slowed me down a bit over the last few weeks but I’m still hard at work on my next book. Since your curious, my current project is the third book in the Wanted trilogy.

And after I finish that one I’ll start in on the next – I don’t believe in wasting time between novels. I’m not sure what the next one will be, unfortunately, but I’ve got several options. Presently I’m leaning towards a sequel to Child of Fate, which is a fantasy novel that should be released late October or early November. My third Wanted book will hopefully make it out shortly after that, mid to late November.

And now back to your regularly scheduled day. Just remember as you go about it to give yourself a goal to accomplish with some challenge to it. Enough to make you feel good about accomplishing it and once you’ve done that, do it again (new goal, not the same one). There’s power in victory, and once you become addicted to it the sky’s the limit!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Measuring Spacetime Displacement

You’re probably thinking one of two things: ‘What the heck is he talking about?’ or ‘Wow, this sci-fi thing is turning into more than just a hobby.’ In either case you may be tempted to call the guys with the white jackets and needles full of chemicals designed to make me drool on myself. There are, of course, better ways to make me drool. Fortunately on my wife has figured those out and isn’t sharing.

Before I get completely derailed from the purpose of this post, I’m writing this to answer a question I’m asked all the time. Where do I find the time to do all of this stuff?! I hate to give away my secret, but not for the reason you think. It’s not a machine that allows for time compression / distortion giving me an extra couple of hours each day. It’s not a support staff of people doing work behind the scenes. It’s so simple you may not believe me: It’s just me being dedicated, motivated, and organized.

Years ago my wife knew I liked to write. She considered it harmless enough, as long as it didn’t interfere with anything else. After a while I got more and more into it and still she supported me. It was the kind of support that meant she was humoring me, again because it was important to me. Maybe that’s not the best kind of support but it was the right kind, and it’s the sort of relationship that I’ll go to my grave insisting is the best to have. As time passed and the writing thing started to take off her support went from humoring me to being excited. I was more than a little excited myself, but I keep mine tempered with the knowledge that it can disappear in a heartbeat if I take my eyes off the task.

So how have I managed it all and continue to do so? I work a full time job that often runs 50 – 60 hours a week, including time working from home. I have two young kids and a great wife that I enjoy spending time with. I’m mildly obsessed with power lifting and staying in shape by picking up the kind of heavy weights that makes Planet Fitness employees run screaming in terror. And up until late last year I was completing my MBA in Strategic Management. As of this writing I have 18 books published and I expect to hit 20 on or about June 1st. Most of them published between late 2011 and now.

The secret is doing the work. Just like anything in life, a job doesn’t get done if you don’t do the work. Procrastinating doesn’t help, nor does convincing myself that I just can’t write for whatever reason I’ve got. Success comes from overcoming the obstacles and doing the work anyhow. Sure, there are plenty of nights after the kids go to bed where I’ll think that loading up Black Ops and trying to improve my kill : death ratio to something above 1:5 would be fun. Most of the time I file that wistful thought away and load up the latest writing project, then start typing. On the rare occasions I do talk myself into playing a game I remember inside of a few games that no amount of practice is going to make me good enough to be a threat, so I bow out gracefully and get back to writing. Damn kids might beat me on a virtual battlefield but I’ve got the old adage to fall back on that the pen is mightier than the sword!

I set a minimum of 500 words a day. Some days circumstances prevent me from writing at all. Other days I’m limited to a couple dozen or hundred words. Those are rare days, because it’s my mission to write. My future and my family’s future depends on it. That’s why my average daily word count is closer to the 2000 – 4000 word range. Right now that means two to three hours of writing. That cuts into family time a little bit, but remember the support I spoke of earlier.

My goal is to make writing the day job. That’s a ways away still, but when that happens it’ll allow those two to three hours to turn into four to eight hours and I can do them out of a home office, then have my evenings left for dedicating to my family. That’s the goal, and that’s what’s most important. Setting goals and working towards them is the only way the vast majority of us will ever achieve success. Sure, one out of a million people may win the lottery or achieve some other windfall of cash, but that’s not me or anyone I know. If it’s you and you’re feeling generous, let me know! Until that happens I’m a proponent of putting my nose to the grindstone.

As a shining example of that I’m roughly three chapters away from completing my next Vitalis book (Evolution). The last one, Squatter’s Rights, took me five or six days to write. This one will be a little more than a week, but I haven’t been able to dedicate quite as much time as I’d like to. I’m expecting it to come in at 20k words or perhaps a little more. Novella length, and a great bit of horror / thriller / adventure for my unruly group of survivors stuck on the undiscovered world of Vitalis.

Up next is the 5th novel in my Voidhawk series. Tons of great plans for that one as well. I’ll be exploring Dexter, Jenna, and the remainder of the Voidhawk’s crew in greater detail.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Life’s Plot Twist

I was a sarcastic and pessimistic punk as a teenager. Nothing was ever good enough and the world owed me. I can admit it and in a few years I expect the majority of today’s teenagers will admit the same thing (not about me, about themselves). I’d wager it’s gotten a little worse these days than it used to be – so does that mean I was ahead of the curve?

It took me some terrible events and rough times to pull my head out of my ass, but these days I’ve actually adopted some outlooks on life that would make the teenage me would cringe in horror. I don’t claim a monopoly on stupid mistakes though – I think we all have our unique levels of stupidity that we have to go through to get where we need to go. As a parent it makes it that much harder to know our children will one day be foundering until they figure themselves out and there’s precious little we can do, other than trying to prepare them as best we can for what will come.

But I’m not here to wax away on the past or on how child-rearing. Far from it, I’m hear to say that hard work and perseverance can pay off. It’s not paying as well as I’d like it to, but I see improvements all the time and I can attribute those improvements to the actions I take to try and influence them. For example, just yesterday I set a personal best on book sales, and it blew my socks off. I sold over 100 books on Amazon in the United States in a 24 hour period. My average isn’t anywhere near that, but it’s been steadily increasing. Seeing that number caused a double fist pump and I was even tempted to go for an air guitar solo. Somehow I refrained.

My fellow writers want to know what I’m doing to generate these kinds of sales. Or at least the ones who aren’t selling as many want to. I can’t blame any one thing specifically, but that’s because I’m doing so many things. Writing is the biggest one, I’d wager. I’m trying very hard to not let a month pass without a book being published by me this year. I’m not sure that’s going to be possible much beyond April, but so far / so good.

I’m also doing everything I can to make it as easy as possible for my readers to find my other books. From links on blogs and my website to links in my ebooks to sequels and other books. I’m still surprised to get emails from people asking if I’ve written a sequel to such-and-such when I’ve included a link to it or a snippet about it in the book they just read. I’ll be damned if I’m going to blame my readers though, itjust tells me I’m not doing a good enough job of letting people know. First thing I do when I get those emails is take the time to correspond with that person and share with them as much as I can. My readers are important to me, I want them to know how much I appreciate them and if that takes 10 minutes of my time then so be it, it’s 10 minutes well spent.

In other realms I blog and I tweet in hopes of sharing news about myself and my writing. The evidence indicates that it seems to help. Although I spent about two months with some broken Twitter apps that were not tweeting for me and I still saw sales steadily improve. I love Twitter and the people on it, but I don’t think it’s the end all to advertising and promotion that some would suggest.

I’m excited these days for another reason too – I just finished the rough draft for Devil’s Icebox, the much awaited sequel to Dark Earth. I loved writing it and I’m looking forward to writing the next one as well. But first I have to work on another project, part 5 of my Vitalis series (Squatter’s Rights). I was worried when I started it, fearing I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. I’ve got plenty of ideas but getting them on paper was the tricky part. It turned out I was unnecessarily concerned, once I started in on it the words just started flowing. At the pace I’ve set I hope to finish it by early April, if not sooner. Yeah, it’s going that good!

After that I’ve got my work cut out for me. Book 3 in my Wanted series is scheduled and I know people are expecting a lot from this book and I intend to deliver. I have to struggle on a daily basis to not think about it – my brain wants to start working on it but I’m not ready for it. If I lose control then I’ll get my projects screwed up and no good will come of it. That, in my opinion, is one of the big secrets to writing success – self discipline. Writing is a job. It’s a fun job, but it’s still a job and failing to treat it responsibly will lead to being out of work.

So stay tuned my friends, I promise some great stuff is happening and, if I have my way with it, it’ll be happening on a frequent basis!

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I’m not sure who said that originally, but I’m blatantly stealing it for the catch phrase of this article. It’s appropriate, as you’ll see in a minute. Hopefully it makes good twitter-bait as well.

This post is meant to assist people like myself – people who want to write books and sell them. Not just that, but also sell enough of them to make a living at it. Maybe living as well as James Patterson is a bit of a stretch, but I could handle paying off some debt at least!

I mentioned James Patterson on purpose. It’s not a sneaky way to get some search engine hits, it’s because my wife likes his books and I have been reticent about them. I’ll admit it, I didn’t care much for the guy and that’s been quite unfair of me. I’d never met him, after all. I’d only read a few bits and pieces of his books. Enough for me to push my nose into the air and say that I didn’t like what I’d read because something about it flew in the face of accepted writing dogma. As he once stated, thousands of people don’t like him, but fortunately, hundreds of thousands do. My dislike probably didn’t bother him very much.

Mr. Patterson reinforced my belief that his writing didn’t adhere to literary form when he said he cares less about the sentences and more about the story. To a lot of writers who take writing seriously, that’s a slap in the face. Some very successful authors even go so far as to say that Patterson isn’t a good writer so much as he’s a good marketer.

First of all, what does it mean to be a good writer? Does it mean that you are hidebound by tradition and do things as they’ve always been done before? If that’s the case, then humanity has been pretty piss-poor in general at maintaining the status quo. Oh sure, most people in positions of power would love to keep things as they are. Without change their system continues to support them, whether it’s a publishing house or a tyrannical dictator. Fortunately for the rest of us the world is constantly evolving. We’re changing and, in most cases, getting better. Why then shouldn’t writing evolve as well? Why should readers have to conform to what an accepted author has written? In this day and age we want whatever it is we want, and the world has become small enough thanks to the Internet that we can usually get it. For writers smart enough to listen to their readers and to give them what they want, the sky’s the limit.

I don’t mean to say that any college dropout with a pen can make millions writing books. Clearly there still needs to be some level of talent so that people are interested in what said dropout has written. If finding your voice doesn’t come natural don’t give up hope – all of us are learning and improving with every story, every critique, and every opportunity we have to read something else. Perseverance is the key, as it is for all things in life.

But back to James Patterson. 1 out of 17 books purchased since 2006 were written by him. 1 out of 17! That’s out-freaking-standing. And for people like me it was very frustrating. He sells more than Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, and Stephen King combined! Nonetheless, I read a little bit out of one of his books my wife bought (Swimsuit, I think it was) and I took note of how he wrote. I scoffed at first, but once I got over that jealousy I began to think about it more seriously. I then started experimenting.

My most recent series, Vitalis, has two published books in it (New Beginnings, The Colony) and two more pending (Parasites, Screamer). I’ve plans to keep it going for quite a while after these four as well. My intent with these books was to write a shorter story that people could enjoy purely for the sake of being entertained. They can get in and get out, taking breaks as needed with shorter paragraphs. I’m focusing on moving the story and keeping it exciting and fun. Mr. Patterson seems to do something quite similar to this. So far I have to say my Vitalis series is arguably my second best selling series, behind Wanted / Ice Princess (both of which have been featured highly on science fiction bestselling lists for a couple of weeks now on Amazon). I’ve even introduced some people to futuristic science fiction in a way that they found very enjoyable.

It’s obvious James Patterson is on to something. John Locke also swears up and down about catering to his market. Sure, John Locke’s two plus million books sold are a drop in the bucket next to Patterson, but it’s still proof that they know what they’re doing. Patterson is also a staunch believer in not being limited by genre. He writes all over the place, between himself and his co-authors. I’m happy to say that I’ve been promoting multi-genre and cross-genre writing for some time now. Guess I’ve done something right, at least!

I’ll admit that I did all of these things either because of or independently of James Patterson, yet I still felt biased against him. I was amused when I caught his most recent commercial on television where he’s pretending to be a bit of a secret agent himself and is promoting the Nook. That tipped the scales for me, especially when I learned that he takes such an active role in every aspect of his business (writing, advertising, publishing, etc.).

And so Mr. Patterson, if ever you should read this, there’s one less voice in the thousands that are burning torches and crying for you to be tarred and feathered. I might even buy my wife more of your books without too much grumbling.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

To learn more about James Patterson…well, he’s just about everywhere these days, good luck trying to avoid him!

Those Tire Tracks on my Back…

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for me. Some pretty major upgrades to the production line at my day job required working through the weekend and some off shifts, then dealing with the ongoing problems the rest of the week. It looks like we’ve finally got it smoothed out, but I’m reluctant to say that too loudly!

My job entails being in charge of all IT related systems in the plant. That means computers, databases, production scheduling, communications, data retention, production execution (we call it MES – Manufacturing Execution System), and a few other related topics. So when we do an upgrade, it’s me walking a tight rope over a steaming vat of boiling water. You’d think it would be properly planned out and an easy thing to do – and on paper it is. In reality there’s some jerk named Murphy running around screwing everything up that he can get his hands on.

The tire tracks I mentioned come from being thrown under the bus. I’d identified the ongoing problems as being related to the heart of the changes that were made – a piece of production equipment programmed and controlled by the engineers. They, in turn, talked louder and insisted it had to do with my scheduling system and lousy network. This in front of a room full of people. It’s the closest I’ve come to laying somebody out in a great many years. But I took it (fists and jaw clenched) because I didn’t have the answer, just a hunch.

Later that day, after our vendor made it back in to support us on it and I worked with him for several hours figuring it out I was vindicated. The equipment was programmed improperly and a necessary piece of communication equipment was never provided to us. With those in place things are rolling nice and smooth. That made the tire tracks on my back feel a lot better. It was like coming back from behind to win a sporting event.

And the engineers? They’ve been staying awfully quiet ever since. Go figure.

For everyone who’s ever been tossed under a bus, stay the course and fight back! Not necessarily with a shot to the jaw, but by digging in and working hard to prove you can do what you say you can. Find that inner resolve to show you can do it, whatever ‘it’ is. Sometimes it’s hard work and sometimes it takes a while to get there – I have a friend who has spent years working hard and just last weekend established herself as the world record holder in powerlifting for her weight class (132lbs, I think). I’m happy to say I’ve influenced her over the years, giving her advice and answering questions.

She’s one example of what successful people already know – dedication and discipline is the only thing that works in life. Sure, luck helps, but that will only carry you so far. Hesitation and excuses are the step that immediately precedes failure. Ironically, failure is okay as long as it isn’t followed by more excuses. Learn from it and try again. Being successful, ultimately, is how you view yourself. It’s not what other people think. In fact, once you’ve been through that process and achieved what you worked hard to do nobody can take that away from you.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Positive Thinking for the Win!

Daily affirmations have been around for a long time. I’ve heard about them for quite a while, years even, but my most recent injection of it was from reading Scott Adam’s blog a while back. Scott Adams, for those who aren’t familiar with him, is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert. He talked about how he used them to help him become a multi-millionaire. Yeah, selling comics. Taken out of context that’s quite a statement. I believe I read somewhere a while back that he’s a Mensa member, or at least has an IQ score high enough to be one. That tends to take the sting out of the idea of taking advice from a cartoonist. Or does it?

Is it a cause / effect relationship? Being smart enough to focus on positive things helped him achieve them. By his own admission he has failed far more times than he’s succeeded. As a possible counterpoint to that alleged high IQ is the fact that he seems to enjoy poking fun at established paradigms and enraging various groups and individuals. As a bystander, I’m often amused by this. I don’t always share his views, but I don’t believe he cares so long as he’s entertaining. That and he’s generating publicity and for someone like him, publicity is a good thing.

So what is this positive thinking nonsense and what are these affirmations. Affirmations, as I understand them are writing down positive things and goals on a daily basis (or more often). That helps you focus on them and the more you focus on something, the more you tend to make it happen. The trick is to keep it from becoming and obsessive / compulsive behavior. Or maybe that’s when the real success happens? Okay, so the trick is stopping just shy of being hauled off to a padded room.

Do I do that? No, of course not. WHAT?! Yeah, I know, what a jerk. What kind of hypocrite am I? Well, I may not write my goals down on a frequent basis, but I hold them near and dear to my heart and I’m always striving toward them. Set backs will happen, but that doesn’t mean giving up is ever the answer. The one exception to the rule would be a romantic interest in someone who’s taken a restraining order out against you. Give that one up.

Let me share a personal example. I’ve written many posts about lifting weights. Check back in the archives if you’re interested, I’ve give tons of tips and valuable information on both lifting and nutrition (including weight loss). My goal has always been to get as strong as I possibly can. I don’t necessarily want to look like the guy who can lift the rear end of a car, I want to be the guy who can do that. I even competed as a natural powerlifter for a year, and had plans to continue doing so prior to an incident occurring. That incident involved me tearing my left pectoral muscle so badly it was completely separated from my left arm.

Take a minute and think about that. The big muscle over your heart that controls your arm moving forward and pushing against anything. Ripped free from the arm it controls, leaving the arm more or less flapping in the breeze like a lame duck.

It’s kind of hard to bench press without that muscle attached. I went to the doctor because, to be honest, this injury terrified me. I identified myself with being big and strong. I was a skinny-fat kid through school who fantasized about fantasy, science fiction, and comic books. I wanted to be special, but it wasn’t until I applied myself and realized that I could only achieve what I wanted through hard work that I began to become what I’d long aspired to be. So being injured like this felt like what I imagined a marathon runner would feel like if they were told they had to have their legs amputated.

A month later I had surgery to re-attach the muscle to the bone. It’s not routed quite the same way it should be – the doc asserts that he’d never worked on someone with so much muscle in the area and because of that it was no easy task to reroute it and reattach it. That was both a compliment and a pronouncement of doom. I moved to Utah a month later, preventing a follow-up or professional therapy. So instead I used what I knew about lifting and the human body to create my own therapy routine. I pushed myself safely and it worked. Six months later I was able to bench press again, though my strength had faded considerably. I worked damn hard and before I left Utah I managed to use my bench shirt with a good friend I’d made out there spotting me and I managed to bench press almost 90% of my prior competition best. Still a ways to go, but it was more than I ever thought I could do again.

As a follow up, earlier this year at the gym I moved to in Ohio I managed to match my best competition deadlift. I collapsed after lowering the weight and, had I not been gasping for breath from the effort of picking up so much weight, I might have broken down at achieving it even though I was a year and a half older. I continue to push my bench as well and even though I acknowledge I may never hit my old numbers, it’s not because I’m not trying to get there. I’ve made changes to my lifting form and training style, incorporating my triceps and lats more. The devil is in the details, but for the sake of the moral of this story it’s really all about aspiring to reach your dreams and not allowing the road blocks that get in the way to make you give up.

And writing? Yes, writing is perhaps even more important to me, so I know I will succeed. I’ll struggle at times and I’ll have to find new tactics to achieve my goals, but I’ll find them and I’ll use them. If you want it, stop making excuses. Go and get it!

Trust me, I’m positive about this.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Afraid of the Dark

At the moment I’m feeling a bit gloomy. My wife’s back in the emergency room. Last week she spent five days here before being released for two days with thoughts that things were on their way to being normal. Now she’s back with the same problem as before, which went largely undiagnosed. I won’t go into details, HIPAA laws and whatnot. Suffice to say we’re alarmed and a little scared. Sure, they’ve done the major tests and those came back negative, so that’s good. The reason for her problems is still uncertain though, which is not so good.

All of this got me thinking about past times and troubles. Times when there’s been too much drama and harassment in my life. Times when things seemed bleak or destined to spiral into a very bad place. Every one of those times I made it through (as evidenced by this post). Some were my fault, such as ending my competitive powerlifting career by pushing myself too hard and ripping my pectoral muscle completely free of my arm (not to worry, surgery reattached it but it’s never going to live up to the original design specs). Others were not so much my fault, like when the job market in Michigan forced plant closures that sent me across the country in search of employment and caused me to let my house go to the bank. I finally closed that chapter just a couple of weeks ago but it was at the cost of our retirement savings.

The message each time is not that bad things happen whether we deserve it or not, but that these things aren’t the end. For example, in my earlier injury I can be appreciative of the fact that I had a job and insurance to help me recover and not leave me with a lame wing flopping in the breeze. In the latter example I’m glad we had the retirement money stashed aside to make it possible to avoid legal action and / or wage garnishments (or worse). We have to build it back up and we’re not getting any younger, but that’s what hard work is all about.

At other times I’m just thankful that I’m too damn stubborn to accept defeat, depression, or misery. As a kid who hadn’t reached double digits in age I accepted that I was afraid of the dark – I’ve always had a vivid imagination and there’s no telling what monsters await when you can’t see them. So how did I deal with it? Well acceptance doesn’t mean taking what’s dealt to me and saying that’s good enough. Not for me. It meant I accepted that I had that problem and that, once I understood it, I could find a way to overcome it. I did too, by shutting myself in the basement and turning all the lights off, then forcing myself to sit there for a while (it felt like days!). Finally, when I could breathe normally and my heart rate slowed to something normal yet no vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or other monsters had eaten me, I stumbled through the dark and up the stairs to the light above. Problem solved. Screw you dark, I won!

It’s a damn shame modern problems aren’t quite so easy to resolve. But as the complexity of a problem increases, so does the solution. Sometimes it requires waiting on others (e.g. doctors), and at other times it requires marching out to the nurse’s desk and reminding them that we’re feeling forgotten.

Just like I’m writing this blog post as a tool to help me wrap my head and feelings around a stressful time, my writing also serves as a release from day to day stresses. I can escape in a medicinally safe manner and let my mind work on my concerns in the background while the foreground tackles thoughts of how Katy is going to deal with her dual fear and hatred of her father even though she’s being forced to face him by the one person in her life she can’t bear the thought of disappointing. Or maybe I’m plotting out the means with which Logan fights the curse that turns him into a monster while he searches for a cure to his condition.

Just like my writing helps me escape from the day to day stresses of work and baffling medical conditions, it also helps me to deal with them. It decompresses my brain and gives me some new angles and perspectives to deal with those problems. I’ve found that reading does much the same for me – it allows me to escape for a brief time and give myself some out of the box objectivity that can help me deal with things. Best of all, it’s cheaper than a prescription and doesn’t leave me with cotton mouth and the urge to go and devour a bag of Doritos!

So the next time you’re feeling at your wits end don’t run from the problems or cover them in a blanket of denial. Seek a second opinion, one that comes from a new character you’ve never heard of before. One who’s dealing with a host of their own problems in a way that can inspire you to deal with your own. Yes, it’s that simple: read a book and open up a world of opportunities you didn’t realize existed.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Real Life Character Development

I think just about every one of us, as human beings, has something in common. We love an underdog story. We love to see somebody rise up and overcome adversity. We love to see the Cobra Kai’s and evil empires overthrown. More than that, we like to see people succeed when the odds are stacked against them.

The odds, I believe, are stacked against almost each and every one of us. We come out kicking and screaming into a bright and scary world. It’s cold, we haven’t really eaten anything in nine months, and what’s that smell? From there we’ve only got the good grace of our parents, guardians, or mentors to help us figure out what to do and how to do it.

What defines is isn’t what we achieve, but what we overcome. The more you think about it, the more you realize everybody has a story and everybody has roadblocks they have to get past. Even the rich kids have issues (sometimes more, except they can afford a personal therapist).

The funny thing is, in a sad and ironic way, when somebody does break free with something remarkable, there are always several people who become bitter and denounce them for their success. I think we’ve probably all done it a time or two, I know I have. Perhaps it’s justified but how can we truly know without having been in their position?

That’s another reason why books are remarkable things. We can read about characters who aren’t real, or at least they’re not real in the medical sense. We can see them run through a meat grinder and emerge battered, scarred, and improved. Things get worse for them but they dig deep and find a way to climb out of the hole. And when they do our spirits are lifted with theirs. We share their triumphs just as we shared their pains. We’ve all had times where things seemed bleak and like we had no way to turn, so we can connect with those characters. To see them succeed reminds us that you and I can too, it just takes hard work and the ability to seize an opportunity when it presents itself. Who knew you could learn something about yourself from fiction?

I believe every single word I’ve written, and I’d go on to share some of my own pitfalls and successes, but I don’t want anybody thinking this is about me. Well it is, but not me personally, rather it’s about another example I want to share with as many people as I can. It’s a fictional example, but it’s also about a character that almost every single one of us can identify with.

Her name is Katalina Wimple and she’s a cop with a bad attitude. She’s a good cop, but she’s got a lot of issues and a lot of bitterness in her. She’s been abused and heartbroken and if that wasn’t enough she keeps putting herself in situations that allow the beatings to continue. Her family life is broken and confused and her love-life is reminiscent of a demolition derby. Yet in spite of all of that – or because of it – she wants to help people so badly she doesn’t care what happens to her. If you pointed that out to her she’d probably pull her gun on you though, so don’t try it.

And this character, Katalina Wimple, she’s as real as they get as far as I’m concerned. She’s feisty and someone you just can’t live with even though you end up loving her and rooting for her. Trust me, I know, she’s been smacking me in the back of the head for months now. Case in point, she just wacked me for saying that about her.

She’s featured in my latest book, The Lost Girls, and will also be readily available to be beat up, shot at, and exposed to some truly terrifying events in the near future when I release the next book in that series, Traitor. I will warn you that the genre is confused, mystery / hardboiled detective but I also tossed in a touch of science fiction. Nothing like aliens and robots though, just some near future gadgets and cool tech stuff.

With that in mind I ask you to give this new book of mine a look. It’s different than my prior Voidhawk series by far, and it’s far from the lawless post apocalypse of Wanted and Ice Princess. It’s everyday life for the most part, and I can’t begin to tell you how very thrilling and exciting it is to me.

The Lost Grls, a Dark Earth novel by Jason Haltead

The Lost Girls can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Smashwords, and other places where e-books are sold.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com