Tag: Religion

Hopefully reading

Ever since the coronavirus officially entered Indiana, the state I live in, I’ve been reading books that had a post-apocalyptic and/or world spreading virus theme. For instance, I’m a little under 200 pages left in Stephen King’s “The Stand.”

At first, I thought I was reading it out of sheer morbid obsession. Reading a book about 99.4 percent of the world dying from a super flu while the actual world is living through a pandemic with flu-like symptoms. But then I got to page 904. For those that don’t know, “The Stand” starts with a super flu that kills off most of the population. The survivors are pitted in a battle between God and Satan. The prophet that God has chosen to lead His people is Mother Abagail. Spoiler Alert: She instructs some people to travel to the heart of evil, Las Vegas, and stand up to Satan’s prophet, Randall Flagg.

Here’s the end of Mother Abagail’s instructions. “But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand. You will go, and you will not falter, because you will have the Everlasting Arm of the Lord God of Hosts to lean on. Yes. With God’s help you will stand.”

Now, only one of those chosen four were religious. The other three were skeptical at best, but they all believed in Mother Abagail. And Mother Abagail believed and trusted God.
I’m sure it’s no coincidence that I’ll be finishing the book this weekend. For those that have lost track of the date/time (I know I have on several occasions), it’s Easter. For those that don’t know the specifics, here’s a brief rundown of events.

Beginning in the Bible, Matthew 26:47, Jesus was betrayed by Judas. He was arrested, taken to the high priest Caiaphas, accused of false crimes, condemned to death, mocked, beaten, and crucified. Here’s the thing, Jesus knew this was going to happen. He knew Judas would be the one to betray him and that he would be put to death. Knowing all of this, he didn’t fight the Sanhedrin physically or try to escape (I imagine he could’ve if he so decided).

Now, I’m not saying that the Bible and The Stand are equal in importance. If there was one text, I would advise reading it would be the Bible.

Both have a great moral story to them and teach a valuable lesson. In fact, in each text, it’s the same moral story. The moral is that if you trust in God and stand against evil, you will prevail. Even if your results aren’t what you desire, you’ll eventually prevail.

And that’s why I’m reading the Bible and The Stand. Not for the doom saying or the plagues or the death and destruction. Trust me, there’s a lot of that in each book.
But there’s also hope.

In this time, the Era of Corona, we could use some hope. That’s why Easter is such an important time for those that believe in God. Jesus died and in three days he was resurrected. If we trust in God and are faithful to His instructions, then we will also live again in Heaven. It is my hope that you find something to read that inspires hope. For me, I find hope in the Bible and fictional novels like The Stand.

I wish everyone has a safe and happy Easter. Remain faithful to God, trust in the Word, and do the only thing we can in this harrowing time.

Stand.

Writing is not Life

Writing is not life

 

Around this time of year, I always contemplate about the past. For good reason too. Ten years ago, my wife and I were married. Four years ago, I graduated college. Three years ago, after a quick downward spiral my wife went to live in another state. One year ago, our divorce was finalized. All these things happened around June or July.

It’s easy to focus on the negatives of your life. When I look back throughout the length of my 33 years, I tend to remember the negatives more than I do the positives. However, today I’d like to talk about one of the positives of my life. My ability to write.

My earliest memory of creatively writing is in the fifth or sixth grade. My parents were in the process of their divorce and my family was fractured. Jeff, my best friend to this very day, and I spent just about every recess on the playground with our notebooks and our pencils. We wrote about dinosaurs mainly because of our fascination with the film Jurassic Park (1993). I wish I’d kept those notebooks. Not to publish of course, because they’d be atrocious. Just for the memories.

My next memory of writing comes during seventh grade. It was a Creative Writing class, my first intramural elective. I wrote a short story called “High School Horror.” The plot centered on a serial killer inside a school killing all the bullies with a well sharpened pencil. If I had to psychoanalyze myself, I’d have to say that I wrote this as an emotional response to my first few grades of being bullied. In the summer between sixth and seventh grade I had started gaining weight and kids can be cruel. This was before all the gun violence in schools. If it’d been after, my teacher wouldn’t have commended my attention to detail. She’d be alerting me to the principal and I probably would’ve been kicked out. Zero tolerance and all.

I didn’t really write anything in high school until my senior year. However, during that last semester of school I started writing a fantasy that, to this day, has never been finished. Maybe I wrote it in order to come to terms with having to face the real world. I’d come back to it throughout the next few years because my reality was pretty terrible.

The first year my wife and I spent together, we rented a house on Ewing Street in South Bend. It was a two bedroom with a partially completed basement. The plan was to have that second room as part office and part craft room. However, as things go, life doesn’t go according to plan. My in-laws came to stay with us. So now we had four adults, one teenager, three dogs, and a cat living in that tiny, tiny home. My in-laws didn’t work for a living and spent all day at the house. I completed my first book, now published, because I spent my time at home stuck in the isolation of that intended office (now turned into a bedroom) writing.

When my divorce was finalized, I wrote a manuscript. I poured into it all of the pain, suffering, and every depressed-filled moment I went through during the two years of separation. The entire story was written in under two months on a spiral legal pad with a fountain pen. The main character was me, but without my faith in God. And it ended with the main character’s suicide.

The years of 2017 and 2018 were the lowest point in my 33 years of life. At least so far, but I pray I never go through that misery again. As I look back on these low points in my life, two things are crystal clear to me. The first is that the ability to write is my coping mechanism. I’ve found that I write best when I’m an emotional wreck.

Before I wrote this column, I was looking through Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and in it I read this:

“There have been times when for me the act of writing has been a little act of faith, a spit in the eye of despair. The second half of this book was written in that spirit. I gutted it out, as we used to say when we were kids. Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life. That was something I found out in the summer of 1999, when a man driving a blue van almost killed me.”

When I read that paragraph, I knew what my column would be about. Writing isn’t life, but it’s a way back to it.

The second thing is that even when life is bad, God is good. It’s difficult to comprehend the idea of a loving God allowing bad things to happen to those that believe. I’m not a theologian, but I think about it this way: when crafting a sword, you have to heat the metal and hammer it into the desired shape. After a series of hammering, reheating, and more hammering you have your desired weapon. If it’s strong enough and doesn’t break, it’s something that you can take into battle. (That’s a very rough explanation of sword making and doesn’t go into every facet but work with me here.)

I believe that God wants us to be the best forms of ourselves. Just like a character in a story, in order to become better we have to overcome overwhelming obstacles.

“Protect me, God, because I trust in you. I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord. Every good thing I have comes from you,’” says Psalm 16:1-2.

Yes, God allowed these things to happen, but He gave me the ability to write. Without that ability, things would’ve been different.

Cross to bear

Do you ever sit down in front of a task and just stare at it for an obsessively long period of time without actually beginning said task because you just don’t know where to begin? No? Yes? Jim where are you going with this weird line of questioning? Well, as you can tell from the very first sentence, that was me when I started writing this week’s Mastering the Craft. At first I wanted to write something Easter themed since this will hit The Pilot News on Saturday. This will release on my site on Good Friday. Then I thought that since this will appear in The Starke County Leader on the Thursday after Easter, I thought I’d write something of a compromise. So hopefully you enjoy this mix between the two.

Idioms are expressions whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meaning of its constituent elements. Thanks Dictionary.com for making that definition so easy to understand. You’ve all heard some examples, but do you really know what they mean? For instance:

• “Wag the dog” means to purposely divert attention from an important issue by focusing attention on a more unimportant issue.

• “Sticky end” means that someone dies in an unpleasant way. I would make a joke about death and Michigan, but it’s Easter so I’ll just move on.

• “Born on the wrong side of the blanket” means that a child is illegitimate and that his or her parents were not married at the time of the birth. 

• “Tall enough to hunt geese with a rake” means that a person is taller than a person of average height.

Some idioms, however, can be predicable. “At death’s door” means that they are dying or very sick. “Cheat death” is another one that pretty much means what it says, that a person narrowly escaped a major problem or accident and is still alive. 

Another idiom that comes to mind is “cross to bear.” This idiom means that the person with a “cross to bear” has a heavy burden of responsibility or a problem that they alone must cope with.

You probably know where I’m going with this.

We all face moments in our lives when we think that a problem is so great that we have to face it alone. Or maybe we are simply too prideful or ashamed so we don’t seek out help. That’s when we have a “cross to bear.” It’s not the problem that causes us to bear the cross however, we do that to ourselves. If you’re dealing with an overwhelming problem in your life and you don’t seek out help, that’s adding weight to that cross. 

I was watching Captain America: Civil War in preparation for Avengers: Endgame and T’Challa (Black Panther) is talking to Black Widow about politics and how two people in one room can accomplish more than a group of people. That’s when his father interrupts the conversation and says “Not if you’re moving a piano.”

The idiom refers to Jesus carrying the cross to Golgotha, the place where he was crucified. Jesus died for our sins. Sure, he could have chosen not to experience all of that pain, suffering, mocking, and abuse. But he endured it and paid the penalty for our sins. That penalty was his death. And he did it alone. 

“And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice,  ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ (Which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’),” states Mark 15:34. Jesus is referencing Psalm 22 which is a prophecy about the agony of the Messiah’s death for the world’s sin. So Jesus knew that he would be temporarily separated from God the moment he took upon himself the sins of the world.

Jesus was alone at that moment so you wouldn’t have to bear your cross (your burden) by yourself. If you’re too ashamed or prideful to seek help from a person, then seek help from God. I mean, He’s always around and He knows what burdening you. 

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account,” reads Hebrews 4:12-13.

Happy Easter everyone, hopefully you learned a little more than just the meanings of idioms by reading this.  

Leaving a Legacy

I’ll probably never have children. I’m cutting straight to the honest truth this week. I mean, I think I sort of blew my chances when my marriage ended a few years ago. And I had gotten married at the prime of my life too. Ten years ago I had a lot more hair on my head. Not like Kurt Russell in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, though. I’m talking like a little less than Thor in Thor: Ragnarok. You might think it weird that I’m talking in Marvel movies, but that’s only because Avengers: Endgame is coming out soon.

The reason why I’m talking about my lack of progeny is that I got to thinking about my upcoming death. That’s right, I’m dying. Spoiler alert: we’re all dying. Every day we creep closer to the inevitable end of our lives. It’s unavoidable, so it’s worth thinking about. Plus, being all alone in this house (or what I like to call the carcass of my broken marriage) I can’t help sometimes being depressed and thinking about The End.

It’s what we, horror writers, do. We think about The End. It’s only natural. At the end of writing a manuscript, those two little yet very important words mark the closing of a tale. In real life, it’s the same. Our headstones represent those two words. The End.

I asked myself once, while sitting alone in the empty house, what will be my legacy? What will I leave this world once I actually die? According to dictionary.com, there are five definitions for  Legacy. Three of them were boring and didn’t apply to my needs, and one of them was hilarious, but the one that stood out was this: “anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.”

If you were wondering, the hilarious one was this: “of or relating to old or outdated computer hardware, software, or data that, while still functional, does not work well with up-to-date systems.” Why is it hilarious, you may ask. I think the same definition could be attributed to people sometimes. Anyway, back to the real focus of my column.

What does that mean? Sure, it could mean inheritance. My father once took me to a storage shed and told me about the stuff he intends to give me when he dies. I told him, “I don’t want to hear about that. That’s just morbid.” Which it was, but that’s what he cared about. That “stuff” is important to him and he wants to make sure it’s taken care of when he passes (he’s still alive if you were wondering… hi dad!). 

For politicians, “legacy” could mean the laws they’ve passed or the service they gave to their country. He served not only in the Vietnam War, but he served as a senator from Arizona from January 1987 until his death in August 2018. No one can deny that he served his country. After his death, there were countless stories about his character. One such account written by Raoul Lowery-Contreras for the website www.thehill.com, had this to say about the senator:

“When one compares the character of John McCain with anyone else, one finds few men who measure up to the senator and the 1,800 days of torture, beatings and broken bones that he, and most other American POWs, suffered at the hands of their North Vietnamese captors. Real men must stand up now to be measured by the standards that Sen. McCain left us as his legacy.”

For writers, it’s pretty obvious what we leave behind: the articles, books, short stories, and other published content. You know, interestingly enough in the paper I edit (The Starke County Leader) I have this feature piece called “Throwback Thursday” where I take a front page from the past and give a summary of what happened. That front page is a small piece some writer’s legacy. That’s what they left behind for us. Now, being in a depressed mood, I realize that my books, articles, even the newspapers I edit won’t really make a difference in the world. A hundred years into the future, I doubt professors are going to be assigning my books as part of his syllabus. I don’t think I’m a terrible writer, but I’m no Stephen King. 

So what exactly should my legacy be and how should I go about leaving it when I pass (I’m thirty-three so I’ve got some time…hopefully)?

Well, there’s another aspect that I haven’t covered yet. I may be a writer, but I’m also a Christian. So, looking on the internet I find this really great article about leaving a legacy in terms of Christianity. It starts by quoting the Bible. 

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith,” writes Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7. 

Fighting the good fight. Finishing the race. Keeping the faith. Isn’t that something that you’d want to be remembered for? I don’t want my nieces and nephews, my friends and other family, and others to think anything less of me. “Oh, Jim was nice, but he wasn’t that good at finishing what he started. He surely wasn’t one for standing up for what’s right. He wasn’t even a faithful dude.” That’s not exactly what I want people to say at my funeral.

I guess the point is that when you die, it doesn’t end at the grave. It’s my opinion that I’d rather strive to leave a faithful legacy than one of half-heartedness.

Never Lose Hope

About a month ago, I was told that I shouldn’t get my hopes up about something personal. I won’t elaborate about that subject because, as I just said, it’s personal and I don’t share everything with you, my faithful readers. I felt mildly defeated after hearing that. It’s only natural to feel that way.

Here’s the interesting thing about the human spirit: it’s fairly durable. “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down,” Chumbawamba said in their immortal song Tubthumping. For those young enough not to know that song, I’d advise skipping that one. It’s useful for this instance, but really that’s about it.

The way I see it, you have three choices when faced with defeat.  Here they are:

  • The simple one is to quit. Sometimes the task you’re up against is just too massive for your abilities. There’s no shame in it, I’m sure we’ve all been there.
  • This one is easy to guess because it’s the opposite of the last one. Don’t quit. “Never give up, never surrender,” is the slogan of the fictional crew in the movie Galaxy Quest (1999). We’ve all been there too. You think to yourself, “okay I failed. But I’m sure that if I just put in another two percent effort, I’ll achieve it this time.”
  • This next one is a bit different from the first one. It’s this: Put it on hold. It’s technically not quitting if you focus on other ventures. Right? Sometimes that’s the best choice. Sometimes you aren’t ready, but you know that after some growing-up, time, money, or some other factor you’ll be able to come back to it. Maybe the next time you’ll be successful.

Now, depending on what you’ve put your hopes in, one choice may be more feasible then the others. Since this is Mastering the Craft, let’s put these choices into a book related situation.

So there you are, you’ve finished writing your first book. You’ve pumped so much blood, sweet, and tears into it over the years that it’s now become more like your child than a bunch of words on a page. Sending out took a lot of mental effort and you can’t wait to hear back from the publishers. “I’ve sent it to four different publishers. Surely one of them will accept it. Right,” you ask yourself.

It’s okay to talk to yourself, you are an author after all. It’s what we do.

Months go by and you’ve stopped checking your inbox every ten minutes. You’re eating Ramen Noodles, you’re a poor artist after all, when you hear your email notification ding. Throwing the chicken flavored noodles down onto the counter, you open up that email from one of the publishers. Even after reading it three times, it’s the same result. Rejection.

“That’s okay, there’s three other publishers that could say yes,” you say as you dive back into your Ramen.

Four weeks go by and you’ve been rejected from every publisher. Now what? Let’s go through the choices I mentioned above. You could quit. There’s really nothing lost other than your blood, sweat, and tears. Oh, and the crazy amount of time you spent working on that turd you call a novel.

Maybe you decide to invest time into another round of edits. You catch several things that the publishers caught. Now you’re ready to send it off to another round of publishers. Maybe they’ll say yes?

You weren’t exactly sitting on your thumbs while you were waiting for your response. You were busy working on another novel. In fact, it’s turning out to be a better one than the first. Maybe rejection was for the best. You don’t want your debut novel to be a dud, right? Maybe after you’ve gotten this whole “being an author” thing under your belt, you can come back and revisit that dud of a first novel. Maybe you can polish it after a few years and send it off again.

You might be thinking, “Why are you talking about this subject?” Well, like I said at the beginning of the column I was faced with these three choices. I could quit my attempts and not have lost too much. I could try again and see if there’s another outcome. I could put the challenge on hold and try my hand at something else. I was contemplating this conundrum when three things happened at the same time:

  • The song “Never Give Up” by For King and Country started to play.
  • I talked to a friend about the subject.
  • I opened my Bible, at random (I’m not making this up), and Romans 8:25 caught my eye. It states, “Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.”

I realized then, that I couldn’t live with myself if I simply quit. I could move on with my life and try something different, but I’d always live with that “What if?” hanging over my head. So I’ve decided to keep at it and see if my perseverance will eventually win. If you think I’m crazy, then you might be right.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” said an unknown person.

Sure, I know the odds. I know that what I’m trying to do has about as much chance as a snowball in Hell. But that’s what I thought when I sent my publisher the manuscript of my first novel. Because I took that initial chance and had hope about my writing career, I’m now the published author of three books and four short stories.

Sometimes you have to put your hopes into what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s what poker players call “going all-in.”

Sometimes it pays off and you’re rewarded for your efforts.
Sometimes your hope is shattered when you fail.

In recent years, I’ve experienced both results. When you win, you feel invincible. When you lose, you feel like you’ll never be able to put yourself in that position again.

I’ll end this week’s column with a quote from the film Rocky Balboa (2006):
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done,” spoke the Italian Stallion, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone.

Writing Horror: One Christian’s Perspective

This last week, I’ve been pondering the question I posed in last week’s rant: As a Christian, should I be writing horror? To be completely honest with you all, I’ve been wondering that for a while. Not just for the last week. But I’ve come up with an answer to that question. 

Yes, do it.

There’s a word that sticks out when I consider the horror genre. That word is apocalypse. You might be familiar with it in the following ways: the zombie apocalypse, post-apocalyptic wasteland (Michigan), or even that semi-decent X-Men movie. 

When you look it up on http://www.dictionary.com, there are a few definitions. Examples include: any revelation or prophecy, any universal or widespread destruction or disaster. My favorite though is the definition that states it’s “a prophetic revelation, especially concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.”

As a Christian horror writer, that last one is the one I prefer. The word originates from the Middle English, Late Latin (around 1125-1175 A.D.) apocalypsis from the Greek word apokålypsis which means, of course, revelation.

You’re probably wondering why I’m giving you all this odd piece of information. Well, another odd piece of information is that my favorite book of the Bible just so happens to be Revelations. 

You guys connecting any dots?

In my pondering, I came across an article on http://www.christianitytoday.com interviewing Screenwriter and Christian Scott Derrickson. He works on plenty of horror films including films in the Urban Legends, Dracula, and Hellraiser franchises. Derrickson explains that the genre is better equipped to tackle issues of good and evil than any other genre.

“It distinguishes and articulates the essence of good and evil better than any other genre, and my feeling is that a lot of Christians are wary of this genre simply because it’s unpleasant. The genre is not about making you feel good, it is about making you face your fears,” he stated in the interview. “And in my experience, that’s something that a lot of Christians don’t want to do.”

My original question seems a bit silly when reading what Derrickson had to say on the subject. Of course, then I come across another article that discusses whether or not Christians should be watching horror movies. The article discusses demon based movies specifically. “As such, this is a subject that should hardly be taken lightly; neither should it be considered a form of ‘entertainment.’,” states that article. It goes on by quoting various Bible verses. Each verse starts to make me doubt my intentions as a horror author. 

Then I get to 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Reading on I get to verse 33 of that same chapter that says “just as I also please men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.”

The question now isn’t should I be writing horror. The question now becomes: why am I writing horror?

Am I writing horror in order to dishonor God? Am I writing in order to corrupt Christians and destroy their opportunity to attain everlasting life? Generally speaking, is my heart in the wrong place?

Those questions are simpler than the others I’ve been pondering. No, to all of the above. If you’ve read my books (if you have then thank you. If not then I hope you all wind up living in Michigan forever (only joking (hey, cool. Parentheses Inception!))) you’ll find that good triumphs over evil in them. There might be a few hiccups along the way, but that’s generally what happens. 

So if you’re in conflict like I was, ask yourself why instead of should. As a writer, why are you writing? That’s generally a good question in any case. If you’re only in it for the money, then I suggest you just quit because you’ll never be happy. 

This advice doesn’t just go with horror either. There’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and general Fiction as well with any other genre. Just because Christians are writers, it doesn’t mean they write purely Christian. Look at J.R.R. Tolkien. There’s a reason why Samwise sticks with Frodo throughout everything. Even after Frodo betrays Samwise in order to keep the ring (addiction). The faithful hobbit doesn’t give up, he goes back to Frodo because he loves him. 

And if I’m wrong, what’s the worst that will happen? Well, I’ll probably end up in Hell. You know, the little unincorporated community in Putnam Township. It’s located in Michigan.

Just saying.

As a Christian, should I be writing horror?

Here’s a little known fact about myself: I’ve been baptized three times. When I was born, I had some kind of complication with a kidney or something like that. Doctors were worried that I wouldn’t live and with my family being Catholic, they wanted me to be baptized in case of something terrible happening. Now, the 2018 version of myself would make some joke about how moving to Michigan would be the terrible thing that happened. But the 2018 James Master died much like how the 1985 James Master almost died. The 2019 version wouldn’t dare throw insults like that around…

Spoiler alert, I lived past that day. Now even though I had already been baptized in the hospital, I was baptized again, but this time at a proper church. I couldn’t tell you where. I had other things on the mind at the time: What is this place? Who are all these giants? Why are they forcing a bottle of white liquid in my face? Why can’t I properly tell the difference between green and red? 

You know, those types of questions.

The third time was five years ago when I asked Christ into my life. Now, I might bore you all later with all that, but I really want to tackle the matter at hand.

As a Christian, should I be writing horror novels? 

If you don’t know, I’m the author of a series of seven books that focus on the Seven Deadly Sins. Get it? Seven books, seven sins… do you see a pattern here? When I wrote the first two, I hadn’t accepted Christ into my life. Looking back now, I’m not sure that those books would have turned out the way they did had I written them now.

I write the books as a means to investigate how the deadly sins of gluttony, lust, pride, wrath, greed, envy, and sloth have an effect on people. Mainly, I write them as an outlet to how the sins are effecting me. 

When you look at a Horror book, what are some of the words you would attribute to that genre? Scary? Violent? Gory? Pornographic? Overly Offensive?

How can I, as a Christian, write things like that? How can I promote my own books that have that type of content? How can I promote other books that have that type of content on my social media sites? Could I even write that type of content anymore? 

How can I do all those things and still walk into church on Sundays? There are kids and young adults at church that know I’m a writer. They can find my books on Amazon. They can even read them if they so wish. How will they view me as a Christian when they finish that last page of the book?

I take a small amount of solace when I see reviews like this one from a fellow horror writer: “It reads like The Walking Dead written by someone who prefers proper English and avoids contractions. I wouldn’t call that a bad thing, but I did find it jarring. Most zombie prose is heavy on vernacular and harsh language, while The Book of Roland isn’t.”

Personally, reading it over again, I think my first book is quite heavy on the harsh language. 

In the past when I’ve thought about this question, I’ve always used the defense that I’m only writing how the characters would act or say. Sadly, sometimes real-life is vulgar. Real-life at times can be violent and gory. Sometimes real people shout obscenities and break down. I’m only writing real-life scenarios.

But if that’s the case, then why am I so conflicted over this?

I’ve come to the point in these rants where I realize that it’s going to be too long to write for one single rant. Sometimes I decide to push on and others I decide to wait a week and come back with the next part. I’m choosing the latter in this particular situation. I promise that I’ll do some digging, both on the internet and in my soul, and come back to you all with my conclusion.