More Amazon.com fun

So there's this cool thing Amazon does that compares a book to other things readers have purchased. So, if someone buys my book and another one, it links them together. So, according to those buying, my novel has been comparable to the reading habits of those who love great, great authors. Some of those include:

- Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
- J.D. Salinger
- Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
- Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
- Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
- George Orwell
- Ernest Hemingway

To even think people would link those books with mine is the greatest compliment anyone could pay to me. Talk about making my day.

Virginia Tech

At least 33 people were killed today in a shooting on the Virginia Tech campus. One gunman. Nearly 60 dead or injured. Then he killed himself.

Even after writing a book about suicide and college, I don't think I'll ever understand a situation like this. For once in a long time, news shocked me.

At one point I was thinking about pulling the book while this whole thing is settled. It felt like those NRA assholes who have gun rallies in towns after shootings. (Remember Charleton Heston in Columbine the next week?)

In the book, I make references to the "sniper in a belltower" massacre in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin. I talk about people killing themselves over a girlfriend. I talk about suicide by cop and taking other people out, too. (To clarify, I adimantly oppose all such things.)

I've even been researching workplace shootings for my next novel.

Instead, the book will go on while everything with VT is sorted out. Until then, keep the college kids who did nothing but go to class in your thoughts and prayers. May the devil have fun roasting the bastard that did it.

One last time...

So I've read my book twice in the last month. Once for plot, the second time for tedious errors. I still don't think I have any idea how to use the English language. But that's not the problem.

There seems to be something going on with everything. There's a certain hardcore element to the book. There are parts of it that I wrote in college. Un-edited journal entries that I'm going to send out into the world. They were my babies back then -- writing things down and I thought I had them taken care of. Then, reading them again, meticulously, I realized little has changed in me from when I'd spend hours writing away at what was going on in my head.

In one way, it's refreshing. Despite a new major, a college degree and three years working, I still am the same person on the inside.

In the other way, it's completely terrifying. I've realized that all of my personal problems still linger, despite the fact I thought I had them taken care of. It's not even close to that.

So, those of you that knew me from WSU, know that what you'll be reading is what I'm still going through. Those of you that didn't know me then, know that I share more with my characters than what I thought.

Still, knowing that life will never be perfect and the chance to explore it is amazingly beautiful, this is where I'm very happy to say I am. I'm very happy to say I was.

I'm glad, now, that I know the difference.