It seems like this blog isn't accessed enough. After schoolwork is done, I'll try to post more things. Lately, life has been...well, let's just say interesting, but in a good. Firstly, my second novel, Letters Across Time, cowritten with a friend of mine, Sami C. Lovegood, will be released later this summer. Expect it around June or July. Actually, when I first start composing the novel, I was going to write it by myself. One day, while chatting with a friend that I attend school with a year or so ago, I mentioned the novel. "Mind if I co-write?" Sami asked, making a emoticon on the school messenger. Inviting her to help out with the story, we decided that the novel would be letters passed between two writers, one an Irish novelist while the other was a Japanese writer of sorts. The story progressed and slowly metamorphosed into this epistolary novella that runs about 120-125 pages in book format. Surprisingly, I am quite excited about the publication of my third novel.

Anyway, I post a story that I have been working on, following thus:

The Confessions of Augustus Zeigler

The quality of life has been distorted by the aging process.
Call me Augustus. My full name is Augustus James Zeigler. I was born in the dust ridden fields of Kansas in the year 1929. As parents, mother and father were of a different sort. Drunks, they would often beat my siblings with the farming tools that they used in the yellow fields of Roxbury Flats, the farm where my father grew corn and other such vegetables that he often sold in the market place in town. Roxbury was a quant hamlet of only three hundred inhabitants, a sleepy village of sorts.
Currently, I am sitting in this makeshift study that overlooks this abandoned college of sorts. This belfry smells of rotten bat piss and the shit of stray pigeons. Dirty old men like me often speak in a manner that if often akin to that of young street hooligans. Yes, I curse, but does it matter? I do not believe in God and therefore, I have my own jurisdiction. I am incapable of emotion. Completely devoid of the blasted thing. Sure, as a young man, I felt emotion, but that seems centuries ago. One could say that my life is nothing short of this novel that I have been composing for the last fourteen years in this study that is currently in shambles. For those who know of my work, I compose most of my novels in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in this nonexistent campus that lies within this small hilly valley that is close to a ravine that passes through Estes Park. Of course, I may be lying, but why should I at this point in time?
I, A. J. Z., being of sound and mind, do hereby sign over my life to this entity that most people call death. What follows is my autobiography.
Now, I was born on October 13th in the middle of a field. From eyewitness reports, I was dragged from my mother’s womb by my bastard of a father who said, and I quote, “God, Virginia, get that shit out and get him cleaned up before midday peaks.”

What follows is all the authors that I have read in the last four or so years. Pick a name, choose one of their books, and enjoy:


Thomas Pynchon,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Joseph Heller,
David Foster Wallace,
Vladimir Nabokov,
John Updike,
Jonathan Safran Foer,
Ray Bradbury,
Stephen King,
Bret Easton Ellis,
Danniel Handler,
Philip Roth,
Sylvia Plath,
Evelyn Waugh,
Bernhard Schlink,
J. R. R. Tolkien,
James Joyce,
William Faulker,
John Irving,
Cormac McCarthy,
Washington Irving,
Mary Shelly,
Bram Stoker,
Anne Rice,
Jack Kerouac,
Richard Yates,
Chuck Palahniuk,
John Kennedy Toole,
Milan Kundera,
Gene Wilder,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Haruki Murakami,
Michael Chabon,
Annie Proulx,
J. D. Salinger,
William Styron,
Henry James,
Virginia Wolf,
Ian McEwan,
John Steinbeck,
Ezra Pound,
T. S. Eliot,
Walt Whitman,
Robert Frost,
Geoffrey Chaucer,
J. M. Barrie,
Jane Austen,
Charlotte Bronte,
Emily Bronte,
Willkie Collins,
Charles Dickens,
Gustave Flaubert,
D. H. Lawrence,
Henry James,
Upton Sinclair,
Sinclair Lewis,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville,
Ernest Hemingway,
Oscar Wilde,
Honore de Balzac,
Victor Hugo,
Marcel Proust,
Fydor Dostoyevsky,
Jean-Paul Satre,
Tom Robbins,
Ayn Rand,
Alice Sebold,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Ken Kesey,
Roald Dahl,
James Michener,
John Fowles,
Clive Barker,
Bel Kaufman,
Flannery O’Connor

This poem was written whilst I was reading the novel Nausea by Satre and it is fairly abstract and has different meanings for different people. For me, it is a treatise on the nature of the mind, my mind as a writer. To you it may be competely different...

Across the misted lakes of the mind,
Down the path of pitch,
Up the slopes of a misanthrope,
There a certain hitch.

Splattered in the psyche,
Of every ordinary man,
Straddled with existence,
A sentimental sense.

I am here, the mind calls bashed,
And here life is sane,
Though the insane do remain,
Among the otherwise inane.

For all who think,
who know their mind,
understand that love is divine,
simple yet complex.

This is the rub, of all who think,
that the mind’s creative level stink,
for those who feel a throb of pain,
slithering in their squalor.

This pain is known,
by all who know,
as creative liberties go,
as a subtle show of attention.

We all are novelists, recounting the past,
feeling nostalgia hit the gas,
but for those who think abroad,
are simply known as poets.

As for the simple man,
we write about injustice,
knowing of the entity know as revenge,
being the libertines that all men are.

And as men goes, for those who know,
we write about love and woman,
feeling a sentiment of lost love,
hang heavily in our heart.

For the simple woman,
they write about love
,knowing of the ultimate shove,
feeling that broken heart.

And as woman have the right to know,
they write about broken hearts,
feeling those broken nights spent in limbo,
healing and healing with their own power.

I am the shadow of the writers pain,
and I know of simple pleasures,
so let us regain, now dear friend
,our own creative abilities.

Identity

There is a certain subtle beauty to which I have been taught over the last fours years of my life. Identity is a certain element of all human being’s lives and allows one to look into one’s soul and cope with who they are and what they are. They are able to ‘identify’ with themselves and this seems to be journey that most humans take at one point in their lives, whether it be when one is sixteen and in high school or forty in a failing marriage. Identity is part of the human experience and aids in the maturing of most adults, as well as young adults. Countless philosophers have a concrete theory of ‘identity’, which is sometimes called sameness. It is the overall theory that identity is whatever makes something the same or different. In my mind, I agree with this in a sense. For me, this theory involves both inanimate objects as well as animate objects, but deals with something on the outer shell. For animate objects, it doesn’t deal with the emotional state of identity.
Such elements of life has left me in a dismal state and I have found it hard to find my own identity or who I am. In my mind, identity is who and what I am. It defines the person that I am in this moment in time. Though some scholars may disagree, this is a personal philosophy and reflects my thoughts and understandings of the world through my eyes. There are times when I look back see if my identity has ever changed and it has. As we mature, I believe that everyone’s identity changes, along with the overall passage of time. It is also a psychological element. Maturity and identity, I believe, dwell together and share an almost ominous quality. It is something that everyone wants to find, but it seems to evade us. It escapes when we need it the most. It is the knight who has been searching for the treasure of gold, but is always thrust in different directions. Identity is the journey of all living things. We must find it within ourselves. Once this is done, we can move forward and find the knowledge that we are seeking.
In my freshman year of high school, I was a chubby white male who had auditioned himself into a performing arts school to divulge his time with the theatrical arts. As the year progressed, I aged and the philosophy of my mind dwindled into nothing but a mere scrap of burning paper. With time passing and grades starting to fail, a disease I had as a child avenged my body and slowly took me into a descent of ill health as well as depression. In these dark times, I was often left alone in a dimly lit hospital chamber, hooked up to whizzing machines, knowing that I was sickly. I had hoped to see the light of life again, but depression took hold and the unbearable darkness of actually being a human took hold. It may have been in the painful procedures or the subtle surgeries, but I slowly matured into something that I didn’t think I could possibly become. In my enlightenment, I found my identity, who I was as a person. At that time, I felt that I was a Christian being with a good head atop his shoulders. I was wrong. I had thought that I had matured and that the identity had come to me. Now, I know that it takes time and that it can change when one has constantly changing personal viewpoints. In this sense, I continued my journey, as a students and a human.
Two surgeries later, I entered into my first serious relationship and was shown what a schmuck I actually was. I had not matured. I had not found my own personal identity. I was a lost soul, gliding through life on autopilot. This changed and for the first time in my life, the gates opened and I was allowed to enjoy myself and who I was. In my journey, I found that I was a decent writer and a humble human being.
My philosophy slowly metamorphosed into what is called existentialism. I controlled the aspects of my life. With a new identity, I saw myself in a new light. When I look back at the chubby boy in the hospital bed, crying his eyes out, I see a young man who had not yet found himself. Everyone has their own opinion and it is great that they do. Some may had a differing opinion of the nature of identity, but I find that it is finding yourself and who you are comfortable being. This is identity and no one can take it away from you.
Call it life’s journey. I once heard an elderly author say that identity was the journey of life and that we don’t find it until the very moment we pass on. In that moment when we are able to look back at the things that we have done in life and assess our wrongdoing. As I listened on the radio, I heard this elderly author speak the following, “We are sent to this earth to complete a mission. We are expected to mature. We are expected to live life to the fullest. We are expected to enjoy everything. And finally we are expected to identify with ourselves and realize the most wondrous epiphany of all: that we had lived a life worth living” It may see a bit inspirational, but I somewhat agree with what the author was saying.
Look through any dictionary and you will find a definition for ‘identity.’ It is the instance and condition of being one’s self. It is finding who are you. It is being comfortable with the person that you are becoming. Nothing and not force of will can snatch this from anyone. And most humans know this.
Identity is the basis of all self interaction. It is identity.

Fragments of a Scattered Mind...

It may seem impossible to believe this, but over the last week and a half or so, I have written over 190 pages of prose, which is a big step from most of my writing. Usually, when writing a short story or a novel, it takes me nearly a year to get the first draft finished. Now, I have the first draft of my newest novel nearly done. Hopefully, this one I can get edited by the writers group that I attend on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

On a melancholy note, one of my favorite authors died on Tuesday, 27th of January, from lung cancer in a hospice in Danvers, Massachusetts. John Updike was one the great prose stylist of his generation and will be greatly missed by most of the Literary Community. Amongst his novels, they deal mainly with the American small town, Protestant Middle Class. Currently, I am reading the first novel of his Rabbit series, Rabbit, Run. Following this I will be off to reading Rabbit Redux. He is one of my favorite authors. You should read him sometime.

For a little surprise, I am going to post the first chapter of my newest novel, The Fragments of a Scattered Mind, following thus:

1.

HIS MIND WAS A MACHINE THAT WAS UNABLE TO STOP

Laying uncomfortably in a small rectangular bed, Joseph Munglar looks up at the ceiling and watches a dusty gray and black moth flitter through the stucco ceiling, its wings depicting two sinister eyes, gazing down at the former literature professor. It is on this day, of all monotonous days, that Joseph may be released from this prison, this asylum. So, legs crossed, his mind quite sane, he closes his eyes, pushes his head against the feather filled pillow, and hums, a habit that has formed since his slightly short sojourn with madness. Suddenly, looking across the room at an opening door, he sees a nurse in blue scrubs, saying, "Munglar, come along. Doctor wants to talk with you." Nodding, he wonders if this may be the day that he may be let free, released, discharged. Knowing that he may be quizzed about his feeling and emotions, he straightens himself, rises from the screeching bed, and follows the blue clothed nurse into a grimy tiled hallway. "Come along, now," the nurse mutters, leading Joseph to a pale oak door. "Just knock and he'll have you come in."

Standing before the door, he watches the nurse walk away, his footfalls dissipating into a dull thud. God, Joseph thinks, so this is what it comes to. Standing at this door, awaiting my fate. So be it, I guess. And, without any energy at all, he brings his knuckles to the chilling surface of the ornately decorated door. "Come in, please," he hears a slightly raspy voice intone severely. Pushing the door open, he walks into an elegantly dressed chamber. Plaques are nailed to the slightly white washed walls. Certificates glisten in the ample sunlight that streams through an opened pair of oak French doors that look out upon a glassed in emerald tinted greenhouse.

"Mr. Munglar, please sit," the psychiatrist, Dr. Doitover, says, motioning towards a straight back chair that sit at an odd angle that slightly faces the doctor and his unorganized desk. Doing as he is told, Joseph sits and tries to get comfortable, but is unable to as the chair is extremely hard. "I know you've been here for about a month, isn't it? Right, a month. We've given medicines to control your depression, armed with the coping skills that are necessary in life, and have fed, clothed, shaved, and bathed you. What I am trying to say, Joseph, is that we can't do anything more for you here. You are the one who has to decide and act upon your actions. Over the last month, and during my observations, it seems that you are happier, you know?"

Nodding, Joseph listens, tracking his thoughts as the doctors drones on about the treatments that were prescribes and the thick packets that were handed out in what was obviously dubbed 'Group.'

"Therefore, I have decided to have you discharged today," Dr. Doitover says, thumbing through a thin chart, his thin horn rimmed glasses on the bridge of his thick nose.

Looking directly at his doctor, Joseph is in disbelief. Often at times late at night, he would lay awake, thinking. His thoughts were often jumbled, but he was often afraid as to how long he would be in the Chaucer City Sanitarium. In his mind, he felt that he would spend the rest of his life, wasting away as he composed novel after novel and short story and short story. It could be said that his mind was a machine that was unable to stop. So, sitting across from his careworn doctor, Joseph smiles subtly, a mere passing grin, and for the first time in a while he actually feels happiness warmly spread through his yellowing toenails to the long brown follicles of his slightly greasy hair. Since the death of his wife Emma, he had been in a long slump of semi-depression, often drinking to excess, sleeping with various disease ridden prostitutes, and partaking of tobacco-like drugs. And now, euphoric yet sane, Joseph hears his doctor tell him that he may leave once the paper work in finished.

Standing, he leans across the messy desk and shakes Dr. Doitover's hairy hands, saying, "Thank you. Really, thank you for the help."

"You don't need to thank me, Mr. Munglar. I gave you the tools. Now you just have to use them," Dr. Doitover says, half to himself and half to Joseph.

Turning on his heel, Joseph marches out of the office, down the hall, and into his cell, where he fetches a small suitcase that an orderly had brought in whilst he was meeting with the psychiatrist. From here, he retrieves all of his clothing, folds it crispy, and sets it in the piece of tan luggage. He is nearly ready to leave. All that he has left to do is to retrieve his writing, identification, birth certificate, teaching credentials, and a piece of frilly lace that had once belonged to his lost Emma.

Please note that this work is copyrighted and is not to be used for anything but reading pleasure. Thank you.

So, I've been working on a new novel. Actually, it is a sequel to my latest published work, The Mysteries of Love and Madness. I've finished one part of the novel, but am still working on finding Joseph a love interest. Basically, the novel consists of 10 or so parts, with the odd parts consiting of 10 chapters each and the even parts consisting of first person narratives told by Joseph about the events that revolve around the story. I'm not sure if I want to use that format again or go for something different. Guess I'll have to decide in the next draft. At first, I was going to title the sequel: The Mysteries of De'Chain, but I didn't think it it fit the story. So, I'm titling it: The Fragments of A Scattered Mind as a place holder for a title.

Jeeze, I haven't posted a blog in a while. Hopefully, I can keep up with it.

As of right now, I am reading four different novels:

-Rabbit, Run by John Updike

-His Robot Girlfriend by Wesley Allision(Rereading)

-Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

-Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis