interests

I don't think that someone can really listen to songs like John Michael Montgomery's "The Little Girl" without being affected in some way. My favorite artists are Tanya Tucker, Loretta Lynn, Sara Evans, Leann Womack, Tracy Byrd, Garth (of course), and George Strait. I am not particularly fond of artists like the Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, and SheDaisy because of their pop sound, although they all have good songs out there, and Shania is/was a country darling, I just wish she hadn't gone so pop. I have found that I really like the old twangy country, especially with a banjo, steel guitar, and some good fiddlin. Yee-haw! I love country music so much in fact, that I put a full list of my country CDs on this website.

I like museums and art as well. I have no problem going to an art exhibit, or a museum on any old day. I can appreciate the symphony as well as the opera, and I have been to a number of big production ballets (this is because of my good friend Dave, who is a ballerino with the Oakland Ballet). I especially am attracted to ancient Egyptian art, and I enjoyed seeing King Tut immensely when he was in San Francisco so long ago. I also went and saw the Tombs of China exhibit when it was in Portland, Oregon. That was quite a treat because I remember looking at the vast Chinese terra cotta army in National Geographics as a child. I especially appreciate the ancient arts, like the rock paintings you may have seen on this site. Northwestern Native American art is also one of my favorites.

I really enjoy the outdoors, so I like camping a lot. I prefer to go to more remote locations than most people do, not totally remote, just no RVs etc. My favorite camping place in the whole world is in Mount Lassen Volcanic National Park, near Redding California. There will be some pictures of this place on this site at some point, I just have so much to do. I am also a fan of waterskiing and snowskiing, but I don't get much of a chance to do either. I know I live in Colorado, but I don't have a 4WD to get to the ski resorts, and well, I just wouldn't even try without one. I don't have a boat to waterski with so I don't get to do that very often either. Boo hoo. I also like jetskiing, and this one I plan on pursuing at some point relatively soon. I wanna buy a truck and a pair of seadoos or something and hit the lakes every summer.

In the last few weeks I have decided that I want a puppy. But first I need a Jeep and a house since it wouldn't be fair to have a dog live in an apartment. I think that I want a German Shepherd, as I have always been partial to that breed, of course the labradors are nice too. Wonder if I will have a problem training him to eat bologna and cheese sandwiches like I have with Hoover.

Another of my interests is writing. Writing is the one artistic talent that I seem to be gifted with. I am tired of working, and tired of having to get up and go to work everyday just so that I can live for the few hours each night with my family, and the two days a week that we call weekends. I am ready to retire, but I don't have much of a retirement yet. So, I must find another way to retire early. Thus, for the last two weeks I have been studying The Writer's Digest book of Novel Writing. I have been doing this so that I can avoid (hopefully) at least some of the common mistakes that novel writers make. I have 25 pages more to read before I begin, at last, to write the story. I have been outlining for a few weeks, and developing my characters while I have been studying. It has actually been difficult for me to hold off on starting the story. I feel that having waited and studied first was a good thing because now I have a much better idea of what I am doing.

Here is a short synopsis of the story and its main character. Basically, the first rule of writing is to write about what you know. So, instead if writing a romance novel first, like I was planning, I decided to write a fantasy novel since that is what I spent my teenage years reading. The storyline goes as follows...
It takes place in a completely made up world filled with all of the standard things found in a fantasy story-magic, dragons, elves, etc. The story begins with an entity being summoned to our world (the world of the story) by either a group of religious fanatics, or by a wizard-I haven't quite decided yet. Basically they assume they are summoning a spirit from the underworld, and thus take precautions appropriate to evil spirits. However, the entity escapes immediately, killing everyone around it and gets loose into the world. From there it begins the systematic destruction of the entire world. Why did this entity not respond to the normal protections vs. spirits? Because it isn't a spirit at all but an alien biological weapon designed (originally) to destroy entire civilizations. It turns out in the end that the entity was created a very long time ago by an alien civilization as a biological weapon-a weapon designed to utterly destroy all life it comes across. This weapon was left behind after an ancient war in another dimension ended, and this is what was brought into our world. Aliens, magic, elves, spirits, and love-the makings of something anyway.