One thing I can say about my recent health scare is that it has gotten me writing again.  I started on a new novel which at the moment is mix of ideas.  I started with the concept of an lesbian vampire novel, (yes, I know that not original, but what is?) and setting in Richmond, with a secret centuries old anti-vampire, anti-gay group  called the LAW [the Lord's Army of Watchmen] based on a real life Baltic group,  and I notice violence against LGBT persons is disturbingly similar to violence again other people and even fantasy beings like vampires and werewolves. [Yes, I know it sounds like Dan Brown meets Bram Stoker, but it could be worse, believe me.] If one can understand the horrible monstrous things people have done out of the fear of the Other, or through a simply lack of compassion for others,  then it can be easier to purge demons from your past.  And by deliberate basing some characters on people I know, it's also helped me understand their own issues.  It was either the Roman poet Terrence or Oscar Wilde who said,  "Nothing human is alien to me."  Even though I'm a straight male, I realized I have had (and still have) a lot of gay and lesbian friends over the years, and I draw on them for the characters as well as tales told mainly by my late first wife and my having to deal with her bipolar disorder.   I had forgotten what a remarkable woman she was and drawing from her past as background for the main character,  I'm finding my own feelings about her.   By changing the protagonist's sexual orientation it also offers me some distance as well.  And a good writer--hell, simply a good human being--learns what empathizing with another person, even one whose course through your life was reckless and painful,  broadens your understanding of the human condition.

Maybe I'm being presumptuous, but in some ways it's much easier to create a character of a different race, gender, or sexual orientation that it is to create alien races, or strange beings or monsters from our ids.  I'd already been working on an idea for a vampire police detective in Oklahoma City and drawing on some real life horrific murders in the city.  But I think the characters in this project are a little fuller, and more real to me, and I think because I'm drawing on my own experiences with friends and my knowledge of events in ex-wife's life that I suddenly knew that this was a good idea.  Like a lot of writers, I'm reluctant to draw on my own emotions and experiences, but this way I can do just that as well as keeping a mental distance that's healthy and objective.  I don't know if it'll work, but it jumpstarted me and that is the best thing of all.  So far I've gotten a few scenes written and have worked on developing the secondary characters and the members of LAW--sometimes baddies are lot easier to create than good guys, perhaps because it is easier to believe villain's motivations.  So much simpler that our own--unless, of course, we are evil ourselves.  No title yet, and I'd like to avoid anything too "bloody" but that's not on my mind just yet.  But if you have a idea for a title or have a scene you'd like to see in someone's book somewhere sometime, let me know.  The worst I can say is "It stinks," which is a criticism we all faced in our infancy, and there's no getting over that.

To keep you updated on my health, i have an ultrasound on my kidneys tomorrow to check out a cyst on one that cam eup in a CAT scane, and then I'm meeting with my cardiologist and a vascular surgon. With luck, medication will control a lot of this, just as an new, additional blood pressure medication is helping with my hypertension.  All of these issue run on my mother's side of the family, so I suppose I should get made at my genes.  It's the hand I was dealt, but I don't intend to fold anytime soon.
What other choice do I have?
Till next time.