This is the traditional season for thankfulness and gratitude.  I tend to pause during this time to consider this at least on some level.  I try to delve into the subject as deep as I can manage with the goal being to allow it steep into every fiber of my being.  I can't say I am perfect in this regard.  As it is with everything I have good moments and bad.

This year has been more challenging than most to find the time for much more than a surface level and cursory view of the subject.  This hasn't been, because I did not wish to.  Rather it was the result of my life equation being out of balance in a definitely negative direction.  I have been spending my time running from one five star problem to the next.  If I were honest, I would have to admit I have not made much headway on any of it.

This morning in the wee hours of essentially ohmygawditstooearly for this, I got a screwed up wake up call.  I mean that in the literal sense of the word.  A little after six this morning, I awoke to someone pounding on our front door.  Now given at this point I was running on maybe three hours of sleep, work priorities ran into the early portion of the wee hours.

Let me be clear, I know that urgent notifications at this point of the morning are never good news. Publishers Clearinghouse has never pounded on my door at this hour to announce I have won a prize.  I understand that this is usually to notify us that something awful either has happened or is happening.  I get that good news tends to arrive at a decent hour when sun is shining.

This was a neighbor of our checking on us and notifying us of a fire nearby.  His insistent pounding on the door made us aware that our neighbor behind us had a fire.  Everyone in the family woke up, and found the fire behind us to be fully engorged.  Our neighbor's garage had caught fire.  

Words cannot describe what I found when I went to the back window of the house.  I could feel a raging fire through the triple pane windows of my house.  I could only see the fire and the smoke. Everything beyond the fire was obscured in smoke.

For a moment I considered attempting to do something.  That thought evaporated when I opened the door and felt the oppressive nature of the heat.  Then I heard a series of booms and bangs, which told me that there were things in the realm of the fire that were excessively combustible and were feeding an already horrible moment.  I had to pause and realize all I could do was make sure the fire didn't spread onto my property.  About this point I hear the sirens of the fire department, and saw them arrive and deal with the problem in short order.

As the smoke cleared and the sun rose, the house was not burned.  My property was largely untouched.  My neighbor lost four cars, a garage, and everything inside it.  The good news was that no one was harmed.  All the residents of the house and their animals were in good shape. Given the possibilities of such an event, that was the best outcome if something like that has to happen.

The event in and of itself set to wondering, as things like this always do.  The fire put all of the stuff I struggle with on the day to day basis in better perspective.  I deal with a lot of crap in a given day.  Some of it has been and continues to be serious, but I am not struggling with a burning house or garage.  I am not now having to deal with the intricacies of making an insurance claim.  I am not trying to figure out what was lost.

Before you think me a particularly craven sort of person, only concerned with myself...  I did check on my neighbor later on in the day.  They are all fine.  ther were insured fully for this event.  Their insurance company had already been to see them and rental cars and initial checks for immediate damages had already been written.  So they are fine in the immediate sense.  They will be walking through the process of clearing up the damage and starting over again in the coming weeks.  This is a good thing.

The event reminded me of some simple things.  I have been and continue to be blessed beyond my ability to fully comprehend.  My struggles being what they are reside within the realm of being resolved.  Even if they weren't I reside in the presence of a God that hems me in on all sides.  In tough times my God is there.  

This wake up call was jarring.  And it made for a completely different day than the one I was thinking I was going to have.  It was a sort of interrupt to the normal stuff.  It forced me to remember and be grateful for all that is within the sum total of my life.  It forced a different tone to my season of thanksgiving.

It forced me to move beyond the superficial aspects of this season.  It forced me to remember who I am and whose I am.  It forced me to remember my placement is not accidental by any means.  It forced me to remember that in all things God is there.  It forced me to remember that my creator has my back in all things.  It forced me to remember that it is in the context of this most primary and primal relationship that my worth and my value is determined.

I find myself praising God in this moment.  I find myself driven to my knees in thankfulness.  I hope that your season of thanksgiving does not require such a wake up call.  Allow me to extend a warm happy thanksgiving to you all.

From my earliest memories of story in all of its forms, I have been fond of the monster.  A good creature feature with an ‘alien being’ in black and white celluloid with a scratchy soundtrack or on the printed page alternatively, I found to be compelling entertainment.  Whether vampire, werewolf, mummy, or from the black lagoon mattered not.  I loved them all.
           
For a time I confused my passion for the monster with a passion for horror.  As I delved into the genre more, I found my path separated from horror and that I really enjoyed the monster archetype and all of the associated tropes.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good scary story.  I adore a things that go bump in the night tale.  That is a secondary passion to my affinity for the monster.

More specifically, in the space in which modern horror has diverged from the monster tale, I have diverged in my affinity for the horror genre.  My intention is not to throw stones here by any means, but modern horror has on some level devolved into a grotesque mockery of itself.  It has on some level become a modern outlet for torture porn bathed in buckets of blood.  Not something of which I am fond by any measure.
           
A good creature feature now, that always has my full and undivided attention.  I will line up for them.  For the most part I have seen them all, good and bad.  In no small measure I find a distinct affinity for what most in fiction refer to as ‘the other’.  The being that didn’t ask for their current state.  The one that has been cast out of modern society.  The one that went to its own looking for acceptance and found only rejection and pain.
           
This forms the basis for all good monster tales.  Some say this is a maudlin holdover from the Victorian roots of the form.  I find this to be tripe, and a justification for the current state of modern horror in most cases.  The monster trope, the archetype, is at its best when it honors its roots.  It is running at its peak when it is delving into the deep questions of our humanity.  A good monster tale can do all of that and a lot more.
           
When the form does what it is supposed to it reveals our human weaknesses and frailties.  In the hands of a master of the form we realize that the creature is rarely the monster.  The creature is merely the reflection of the true monster.  We realize that it is Von Frankenstein that is the monster and his creature is merely the thing he created.  We realize that Count Dracula is the reflection of our dark side that dwells in all of us.
           
I grew up adoring all of the forms of the monster.  I grew up loving the Dracula tales.  I bayed at the moon with Lon Chaney.  Listening to a medieval organ played by a masked figure touched me in a deep place.  The dark places these creatures went revealed in me more than I wanted to know.
           
In recent years though, my affinity for the werewolf, the vampire, the dragon, and others has waned.  The reasons for this have more to do with my distaste for popular culture.  I hate what our culture does to a thing when it obsesses over it.  It takes something wild, something frightening, something altogether alien to the modern world, and well wipes its arse with it.
           
When the [insert monster form here] becomes the newest craze, all of the things that drew me to it in the first place gets wiped away.  It becomes a well-recognized thing.  It becomes the current darling pet of modern culture.  It becomes something less than it deserves to be.  And we cease to be able to fear it.  And that end result is one that I find disgusting.
           
So usually by the time something I adore finds its way into popular acceptance, I tend to exit stage left.  More often than not I do not wish to watch or read what comes next.  The defanging of the thing that once scared me, is an act that I do not wish to be party to. Certainly I can’t either abide or endorse it.
           
And when it comes to the monsters I select as participants in the fiction I write, I opt for the less common ones.  I reach for the ones that have not been bleached by the klieg lights of our popular culture.  I reach for that which still scares me.  I reach for the things that still put a knot in my stomach when I think of them.
           
So it goes without saying that I still adore the original forms that scared me, but when I put pen to paper, I seek out the rare and the obscure.  When I need to tell a monster tale featuring a member of the draco family, I reach for the wyvern and not the dragon.  When I need to tell a tale of the dark and foreboding featuring misunderstood beast plaguing humanity, I reach for the ghoul and not the vampire.
           
Some have accused me of being contrary in this perspective.  On some level they may be correct.  I do not wish to tell the stories that have already been told ad nauseum.  I wish to depart from the common forms when I write fiction.  I do not wish to let the reader have a sense of familiarity with the tale, because they know the form.  I seek first and foremost to force the reader to pay attention precisely because they do not know the form.
           
A common quote of which I am fond comes to mind at this moment.  ‘I aim to misbehave’. I aim to go where the reader does not expect.  I aim to seek to honor that which we know by going where we haven’t been with something that we are not familiar.  Failing that, I hope to do that with something with which we are not intimately familiar.
           
It is always my hope to take the misunderstood and weave a unique tale of my own creation.  In the course of doing so, I hope to honor the tropes and the archetype.  I hope to delve into the places that cause us discomfort.  I hope to reveal as much about ourselves as about the monster in doing so.

By now most people the world over have heard about the horrific acts perpetrated by cowardly thugs in Paris.  There are few facts as of right now.  Most responsible news agencies are reporting a death count greater than 100.  They are all saying that that number will continue to grow as all of the facts are collated and numbers are tallied.

If I were to take my own advice right now, I should keep my mouth shut.  Facts are in short supply, and the 24 hour news cycle is filling the airwaves with rampant speculation.  I don't want to add to that with any missive of mine.  Some news outlets are trying to stick to the facts.  And I want to applaud that without calling any out by name.

I am however compelled to express a few thoughts.  I will try to be brief.

My heart breaks for the citizens of France and of Paris in particular tonight.  It appears that lives were cut short in the midst of various celebrations at the end of a work week.  People out eating a meal, taking a concert, sharing drinks with friends, or enjoying a soccer match across the city came to a horrific ending tonight.  It was awful, and to use French President Hollande's word 'horrific'.

The citizens of Paris did not deserve this.  The French people did not deserve this.  The world as a whole did not deserve this.  There is no cause under the sun in the community of man that justifies these actions.  There is slight, no wound, no injustice that makes this course of action acceptable.

This coordinated and calculated assault on the people of the world cannot be allowed to stand! Innocent blood has been spilled this night.  Innocent lives wantonly slaughtered.  We as a species must unite as a single entity in order to hunt down those that perpetrated this act.  More than that we must find those that planned it, those that funded it, and those that gave the operational approval for it, and hold them accountable.

The temptation to devolve into vengeance here will be strong.  We must resist that temptation with every fiber of our being.  It is not enough to end those responsible, though that is important. It is important to show these barbarians how a civilized world responds to barbarism.  We need to bring justice to them, wherever they may be!  We must be swift and sure, but we must be as just as we are civilized or at least we are supposed to be.

The ends will not ever justify the means here.  It is not enough to put the skulls of the criminals responsible on a pike.  It is important to ensure that we uphold all of our traditions in the process. That means fully investigating this crime.  That means an orderly trial and appellate process.  And only after all of that is complete, then delivering the last full measure of justice to the guilty!

To all the victims of this senseless act of criminality, you are in my prayers.  I weep for the dead and their friends and families.  My heart breaks for all of you.  I don't know what I can do to help other than pray right now.  If it occurs to me, I will do it, and encourage others to do likewise.

That is all for now.