Hunter at the pound.

On Friday, my wife and I became foster parents.

For a dog.

The story’s a sad one. Hunter is a 3 year old beagle who was dropped off at a Missouri animal shelter because the family was moving and couldn’t keep him. He’s housebroken and seems to be trained to respond to some commands, and the family claimed his shots were up to date. But for whatever reason, they decided to drop him off at an animal control facility the way one would drop off a bag of old clothes at Goodwill. The poor dog, who is sweet and friendly and adorable, was slated to be put down if he couldn’t be adopted out within a few days.

I found out about the dog through St. Louis Pet Rescue and, braving snow and ice on a Friday afternoon, drove out to the shelter to pick him up myself.

I’m so aggravated that this even needed to happen, because it says something about how people in our society treat their pets. I love my pets, and I probably spoil them a little, but I try to make them happy because they make me happy. I can’t imagine life without them, and I tear up at the thought of Ramses or Oscar passing away. So, for someone to be so cold and callous about their pet is alien to me. I don’t understand why they couldn’t have at least found him a home, or contacted a rescue organization. He’s a purebred beagle, for crying out loud. People pay hundreds of dollars for them at the pet store. (The sale of dogs at the pet store is another gripe, but we’ll save that for another time.) Instead, they simply said, “we can’t handle this dog any more, so we’ll turn him over to the authorities.” That’s just loathsome. They took a creature that loved them deeply and they discarded him because it was too much trouble to make sure he was properly taken care of.

The Animal Control facility people are frank: they destroy dogs after a few days. They have to. They don’t have the space or the funding or the ability to keep these dogs, and they are reliant on rescue organizations to come in and bring the dogs off death row. It’s an ugly situation. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that every year, 6 to 8 million dogs and cats are brought to shelters, and of those, around 4 million are put down. Think about that for a moment. 4 million. Where I live, in St. Louis, there aren’t even 4 million people in the area. 4 million is a number that should boggle the mind. 4 million would be genocide if it involved people instead of pets.

People often ask me why I get so upset about animals when I should be caring about people who have problems. My answer is that the way we treat animals reveals much about who we are and what we stand for. If we are kind to animals and have compassion for them, we are typically kind to people as well. If we are cruel to animals or callous to their needs, we are typically selfish when it comes to assisting others. I think this proverb sums it up best:

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal,
but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. (Proverbs 12:10, NIV Bible)

Proverbs are meant to be chewed on and digested. What this one says is that when a person is good, he or she cares for the needs of an animal because that is what good people do. But when a person is wicked (or, by extension, selfish), no matter how much he or she tries to be kind, the action is cruel because the person is acting out of ill-intent and self-preservation. A good person bears good fruit; a bad person is poisonous.

Hunter is so much happier now that he's in foster care!

I don’t know if the people who abandoned Hunter are bad people. But I will say that they are ignorant and short-sighted at best and very likely callous and selfish. They don’t deserve a dog like him. All he tried to do was love them. But they couldn’t plan their future with him in mind.

Fortunately, he is fine now, and sleeping behind me in his crate. He’s a little upset that he can’t be around me all the time, or that he has to compete with my dogs for dominance. But he’s alive, he’s enjoying life, and he’s going to find his way to a family that will love him. I think it’s a big deal, because all of the humans involved in this story are going to learn so much more about compassion than they would have otherwise. And so many more will hear Hunter’s story (or the story of other foster dogs after him) and perhaps consider fostering some pups of their own.

As a final note, I was searching for Hunter’s new profile on Petfinder and came across another beagle named Hunter who was adopted out of the Madison County Humane Society only to be brought back a few months later because he kept getting out of his new owner’s fence. This Hunter was an 8-month-0ld puppy when he was adopted out, and full of energy. Perhaps the owner should have tried walking him more often instead of relying on a fence, or putting in one of the many fencing options that are designed with dogs in mind. Instead, the owner dumped him off at the Humane Society like a piece of returned merchandise. What a tragic world we live in, when the life of a loving canine companion can be tossed aside so callously for want of a better fence.

But what is it about these stories that has made them so popular? It boils down to the following common elements:

1) The presence of an overpowering element. In Lost, it’s the frustration of trying to get off an island populated by seemingly evil forces. In Star Wars, it’s the evil galactic empire and the dark side of the Force. In The Matrix, it’s the presence of the enslaving machines. In The X-Files, it’s the government. In Harry Potter, it’s Voldemort. All of these stories have not just a great villain, but a real sense that this villain (or evil power) cannot be defeated without great perseverance.

2) Everyman heroes. In each of these stories, the heroes are just normal people who are trying to stand up against a great force. By persevering, these heroes can achieve some sort of power (or knowledge), but they are never strong enough, on their own, to defeat the evil power entirely. These heroes also tend to be morally good, though that is not necessarily a requirement.

3) A secret world. Even in a fantasy world (such as the fantasy galaxy of Star Wars), some secret sub-world must exist. In Lost, the secret world revolves around the cult of the Island. In Star Wars, it revolves around the Jedi and Sith. In The X-Files, it revolves around those who have some knowledge of “truth”. In The Matrix, it revolves around hackers who are jacked out of the central network. The sub-world is what the story is able to use to not only reveal key elements of the story, but also what the story uses to elevate the heroes above their everyman status.

4) Unknown story elements that result in mystery. These might be secrets that are being intentionally kept from the characters, or they might be knowledge of the villain’s motivation, the nature of the evil force, or the true power of the secret world. Revealing these secrets must be done in a careful, metered way, though the longer the mystery exists, the more effective it will be at keeping the reader hooked.

5) Plot twists that change the audience’s perception of the story. Plot twists, when employed correctly, can give a story new life. Lost has been notable in that it has introduced plot twists in every season that have changed the very nature of the show. The original Star Wars trilogy offered one major plot twist per episode that changed the face of how the characters would react: Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, the revelation that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker, and the revelation that Luke was fighting not just for his noble cause, but also to protect his secret sister. The X-Files had plot twists that would confirm Mulder and Scully’s quest, only to frustrate them even more when the evidence vanished. The audience was left with a deeper understanding of the story while the characters were bolstered in their attempts to uncover the truth.

6) A very deliberate structure that never allows the heroes to triumph until the very end. This is, perhaps, the most important aspect of telling this sort of story, and it’s actually the reason why the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the two Matrix sequels and the second season of Twin Peaks and the resulting movie weren’t able to achieve the same sort of success as their predecessors.

The structure is very similar to what you see in the original Star Wars trilogy, and it can be remembered by considering the titles of the film. The first film, Star Wars: A New Hope introduces the element of conflict with some glimmer of optimism. The second film, The Empire Strikes Back, results in the overpowering force defeating the heroes and preventing them from prevailing. The final film, The Return of the Jedi, puts the heroes in a last-ditch effort to overcome incredible odds so that they can finally defeat the villain and the evil power behind him.

Now, look at the prequel trilogy and you can see how this structure was employed incorrectly. The first film was titled The Phantom Menace, indicating that the evil power had yet to become overpowering or dangerous. The second film was titled Attack of the Clones, but the third was titled Revenge of the Sith. The conflict of these two films should have been reversed. George Lucas would have been much better off to ditch the first film, begin the new series in the midst of the Clone Wars, have the Sith return and overpower the Republic in the second episode, and then be defeated by the tragic figure of the ends-justify-the-means Anakin Skywalker, who becomes Darth Vader in the process of putting the evil Palpatine (himself a Sith) in greater power.

The Matrix told its story incorrectly as well. The correct structure would have been to kill Neo at the end of the second film and then have him return in the third with a greater knowledge of who he was, allowing the humans and machines to fight the greater menace of Agent Smith. Instead, the second Matrix film decided to info-dump the audience and remove the magic of the story with a bewildering scene that gave answers no one was ready to hear.

Even Lost, which has managed to string its story along so well, has struggled with story arcs that waste characters and provide unneeded information. Charlie, a fan favorite, is probably one of the most wasted characters in the series. He was made into a pseudo-villain during the second season, and then killed off in a meaningless sacrifice in the third. Other characters, such as Sayid, were changed later in the series in the name of plot twists, but these twists were neither necessary nor appealing to most viewers.

Anyhow, the story with the elements above — that is the sort of story I want to write. Three times, to be precise — on three different projects I’ve been working on. Now that I’ve been able to identify these elements, I think I’m in much better shape to incorporate them. The next step is to work on my revisions.

Unfortunately, I’ve gotten so used to TELLING myself what I want to do that I’m having a hard time getting started now that I’ve run out of excuses.

I think a big part of the problem is momentum — as Newton told us, and I’m paraphrasing, objects in motion tend to stay in motion, while objects at rest tend to sit around and feel their butts grow bigger. It’s really easy to make changes if you get some momentum behind changing your life. But it’s really hard to do it when you’re starting from nothing. Getting that first shove so you’re in motion is difficult, and it requires a major force (either through your own willpower or some life event) to make the change start to occur.

Another problem comes in the form of habits. We develop habits because they help us to sort of hardwire our behavior into our brains — to allow us to think less and go on autopilot more. Unfortunately, some habits aren’t very good for us, and some activities we get involved in are actually bad habits. But it’s hard to change a habit. I’ve been trying to ditch the fingernail biting for years with no luck. I don’t like chewing on my fingernails, but I think, deep down, that I’m comfortable with it. It’s hard for me to change because I find some comfort in knowing that it’s my way, even if it’s not a particularly GOOD way.

So, what I need to do are the following things:
1) Get some momentum going behind the areas where I do want to change.
2) Understand that if I want to change habits in my life, I have to do so by rejecting the hardwired response and building new pathways instead.
3) Stop being complacent about being comfortable with “my ways”.

-SJJ

Photo Credit: Markybon (Flickr.com)

Note: This is a non-fiction entry in my personal journal.

It was after an exceedingly stressful day that I was in a 5-car pileup on the Interstate. A pickup truck in front of me hit the brakes suddenly, and then I hit mine. And then, the lady behind me hit me, and the two cars behind her hit each other and then her, pushing me into the truck in front of me. 5 cars, stuck in a domino effect. Every one of us unable to prevent the accident from occurring.

My description makes it sound a lot worse than it really was, of course — no one was hurt, do real damage was done, and the whole thing wound up being a big inconvenience to everyone involved. One of the guys was even annoyed that I called the cops since it was going to take a chunk out of his evening. But isn’t it wonderful that we could all be in a 5-car pileup and be annoyed that the paperwork was taking too long?

Here are some of the many things that could have made the accident much more serious, and potentially fatal to some of us.
1) A semi could have been involved.
2) Someone could have hit their accelerator instead of their brakes out of panic.
3) The roads could have been icy or wet, resulting in less traction.
4) The accident could have spilled over into another lane.
5) It could have happened at a much greater speed.
6) It could have happened a quarter mile earlier while we were still on the curve of a bridge.
7) Someone could have not been wearing a seatbelt and been more seriously injured.

And so on, and so on.

But nope. Hardly any damage, either to ourselves or collaterally. We all lived to be annoyed. I’d call that the best car accident I could ever hope to be in.

Let’s hope the next one is just as easy.

-SJJ

So, anyhow, I entered, and I won third place. For my efforts, I get a free copy of the game “Tetris Cube”! Plus, people who haven’t read my work before might see it and think better of me. That’s always a nice feeling.

I’m really stoked. Of course, I didn’t expect to win a thing — there were some really good writers competing. But it’s always nice to gain a little bit of recognition for doing something well!

Here’s a link to the story, as well as the others. Check it out!

It sounds like the woman was all right. I felt really bad for her.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. Our dogs started going nuts, and we assumed it was the neighbors making noise outside. My wife looked outside and saw three police cars, a fire truck and an ambulance. “You might want to come look at this,” she said. “A car crashed into our retaining wall.”

The woman apparently had low blood sugar (we were told it was a seizure), lost control of her car, and crashed. I’m hoping she’s doing all right — I’m sure she was shaken up by this. But anyhow, I was the only person in the area they could find to quote, so I’m quoted as saying… well, saying exactly what I saw, which was nothing.

So, it’s time for me to start updating again with more of my latest research.

But in the meantime, here’s a quick update on what I’m doing these days.

First of all, I’ve been quietly building up marketing momentum for my next book, Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine Vs. Timber Wolf, which is hand-painted by the incredible Jason Maranto. You can read all about the book at http://www.codeofthewild.com, but you can also check out this cool video I made to get a glimpse of the first book:

I’m also credited in the upcoming seriesDog Eaters, which I adpted from the screenplay by Malcolm Wong. It’s coming out as a 6-part comic book series in November, and a graphic novel next spring. You can read more about it at http://www.dogeaters-manga.com.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve had a big change in my life lately as I’ve transitioned from earning my undergraduate degree in business administration to working towards my Master’s in Marketing Research. It’s time-intensive, but one of the perks of the program is that I was placed in an internship with a small marketing research firm in St. Louis called The Research & Planning Group. It’s taken me a few weeks to get adjusted to the new schedule (particularly since I’ve been taking some time to make adjustments to my personal life as well by exercising more and devoting more time to reading), and I’ve had a hard time staying focused on the publishing side of things.

But the good news is that I’ve been writing fragments of articles in OneNote over the last month, and I’m ready to start finishing them up and posting them. I think a lot of them will be very valuable to aspiring publishers, especially my pieces about STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) and the Blue Ocean Strategy (which comes from a book I just read). I’ve also been clipping articles about the Amazon Kindle, comics as an educational tool, and the future of the publishing industry, all of which I intend to discuss in upcoming pieces.

I do want to thank those who have taken the time to approach me for work as of late. I apologize that I’ve had to turn some of you away, but as my next article will discuss, sometimes, being told “no” is the best thing that can happen to a creative person… and sometimes, being told to “wait” is one of the worst!

With that said, enough about me. Onto the articles!

-SJJ

As if that weren’t big enough news, I’ve been spending my free time preparing for the announcement that my new book, Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine Vs. Timber Wolf is heading to shelves next spring. So, I decided to go ahead and set up http://www.codeofthewild.com to give the book a home on the web… and to showcase some of the amazing artwork that Jason Maranto’s been turning in.

Here’s a peak, this time with fully lettered captions!

Page 2	Page 3
Page 4	Page 5

You can head over to the Code of the Wild website for all the glorious details. It’s exciting stuff!

-SJJ

One of the hardest things about this decision was that my wife and I would effectively cut our income in half so that I could be a full-time student; while we’d been able to afford many things when I’d been working, we had to make the decision to “scale back” on our lifestyle so we could survive on a reduced income.

A year and a half later, as I’m nearly finished with school, things have gotten tough. Like most people in the US, we’re getting hurt by the wildly increasing costs of food and fuel, but since we’re on a reduced income, we feel it even more than a lot of folks. It’s resulted in us cutting back wherever possible — while we ate out regularly when I was working, we can only afford to do so once a month now, and we often try to eat at places where the portions are large so we can take the leftovers home for a second (and sometimes, third!) meal. We avoid fast food altogether, and we’ve started to shop at discount grocery stores like Aldi and the Hostess/Wonder Bread Thrift stores to keep our day-to-day expenses down. We both drive low-frill, fuel-efficient cars, and we’ve tried to reduce our driving as much as possible; this isn’t easy to do, though, since I have a part-time job in St. Louis and have to drive 40 miles to school every day. (Fortunately, my wife’s job is right around the corner, which offsets my driving a bit.)

But all that cost-cutting still isn’t enough, because we’re still struggling to pay our bills. Under the old system, I bought a lot of stuff, whenever I wanted it — books, video games, DVDs and toys. Now, I’m faced with the task of packing a lot of this stuff up and selling it on Half.com, because I’m too busy to get any joy out of it, and too broke to be able to afford to keep it around. And it’s tough, because some of this stuff has sentimental value, while other items are just things I’d like to say I own, even if I never use them. For example, I’m selling off my graphic novel collection because I never read the things, but it bugs me terribly that should I want to read them, I won’t have the option.

All of this has put me into somewhat of a funk, because whether I like to admit it or not, I’m attached to my stuff, and I really hate to get rid of it. Never mind that it just sits around the house, collecting dust; never mind that I often forget that I even have it. It’s my STUFF, darn it, and I hate the fact that I’m so poor that I have to sell it off just so I can buy groceries, pay my bills and put gas in my car.

Now, my situation will improve once I start grad school this fall, so don’t feel sorry for me… hopefully, my suffering is merely temporary. But while I’m feeling sorry for myself and moping about how much it sucks to be poor, I’ve decided to try to learn from this experience and pass on some of the things I’ve realized in the process.

1) When I had money, I spent a lot of it on junk. As I’ve been looking for things I’m willing to sell online, I’ve come across all sorts of things that I don’t remember buying. I’ve also found lots of things that I bought and promptly forgot about, and things that I bought and never used. Why did I buy this stuff? Because I wanted to have it. I intended to use it, but I never got around to it.

What are these things? Toys I bought that I never played with. Books I bought that I never read. Video games that I wanted to own, but never found the time to play. CDs I never made time to listen to. DVDs that never even made it out of the shrink wrap.

I can’t help but wonder if I might have been able to avoid being poor by shopping less impulsively and putting my money into savings. Considering how much I spent on some of this junk, that’s actually pretty likely.

2) When I had money, I spent a lot of it on food. My wife and I used to eat out 5-6 times a week; mostly fast food, but often restaurant fare as well. We did this because we both worked and we rarely were home at the same time; it was just easier to meet for a meal. But when I realized that we were spending $400-500 a month on eating out, I was shocked; after all, we were spending $300-400 on groceries, too, and often throwing out fruit and vegetables that we’d bought with the best of intentions, but were never home to eat.

Now, we have to budget ourselves to around $250 a month for food, and that’s it. $50 goes a long way at a place like Aldi, where everything’s pre-packaged and heavily discounted, but it barely gets you a single paper bag of food at a regular grocery store, especially if you purchase fresh fruits and vegetables and halfway-decent meat.

We cook every day, now, and we prepare meals to generate leftovers that we can have for lunch the next day. We keep a bin in our kitchen full of small servings of snacks we’ve loaded into little baggies so we can quickly grab items for our lunches in the morning. We buy bread at the thrift shops and freeze it when we’re not using it so that it will last longer. We’ve switched from drinking soda and pre-made juices down to concentrates, homemade tea, and Kool-Aid.

3) When I had money, I didn’t think about it. Now that I don’t have it, I think about it constantly. We can’t afford to impulse buy anymore, and that’s a lot harder than it sounds. When I had money, it was no big deal to stop at the Gas Mart for a candy bar and a Coke; now, I have to keep on driving and remind myself that I have food at home.

Where this is particular irritating is in the area of clothing; we’d love to update our wardrobes, but we have to continue wearing the same clothes that we have because we can’t afford to go out and buy a bunch of clothes. My wife had to get a dress for a wedding a few weeks ago, and we had to find a sale item at Kohl’s and maximize all the discounts we could muster just to afford it. I needed a suit a few months back, because my good one had a flaw in it; I had to get one from Goodwill because that was all I could afford.

Being poor has made me extremely price sensitive as well. I think about driving in terms of the price of gas, now — “I’ll be making an $8 trip to St. Louis, then a $6 trip to school.” I can’t buy groceries without thinking about whether or not I can find them cheaper at another store, and I can’t be spontaneous about going out with friends because I can’t afford it and I don’t want them to feel obligated to pay my way.

4) When I had money, I didn’t feel rich. But now that I don’t have money, I definitely feel poor. If you’d asked me how I felt when I was making a normal salary, I wouldn’t have said that I was rich — I was actually racking up more credit card debt when I had money than I am now. Maybe it’s because I’m watching my money more carefully, or maybe it’s because that debt is still hanging over my head and I don’t want to add to it. But still, it’s interesting to note: at nearly double what we’re making now, we were living much further beyond our means than we could ever afford to live now.

5) When I had money, I wasn’t any happier than I am now. Less stressed, perhaps, and less prone to being depressed. But all this junk I bought didn’t make me happy; it just made me want more junk. I told myself I was building a “collection,” but what I was really doing was amassing piles of stuff I didn’t need. Fortunately, other people want it, so I can sell it. I might make back 50% of what I spent, and that’s better than nothing, I suppose. But if I’d saved that money in the first place, I’d be in much better shape than I am now.

This isn’t to say that I’m anti-materialism; some of the things I own I enjoy tremendously, and I use them all the time, such as my computer, my PSP, or my frying pot in my kitchen. But the number of things I use regularly is small; the number of things I have and never use is large. I could be just as happy without most of this stuff as I am in owning it.

I’ve thought a lot about the word “consumer,” and I’ve come to a realization: I’m at this point because I’ve been using purchasing stuff as a means to an end — buying things I don’t need to make me temporarily happy or fulfilled. Often, I’ve bought stuff just so I can say that I have it. That’s not very smart of me. But I have a feeling that I’m not the only person who’s done this…

And that brings me around to my closing thought here. When I’m no longer poor, and I have money again… will I repeat this cycle and buy back all the junk I’ve purged from my life?

I wish I had an easy answer.

The title will be Code of the Wild, and the first book in the series will be fully titled Code of the Wild: Timber Wolves vs. Wolverines. We’ll follow up with some similar titles, all to be announced as soon as the cover artwork is finished and the company’s financials are fully worked out.

Exciting, huh? I thought so. And don’t think I’ve given up on my other pet project, Minus World… I’ll share more when I’m ready to announce something, but things are looking very good on the MW front…