Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Looking forward – a year at a glance

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“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Antoine de Saint-ExuperyFrench writer (1900 – 1944)

I’ve never been a big one for making resolutions for the New Year. I don’t know why. It could be that it always seems so forced to me. You can “resolve” to do just about anything but if you don’t have a plan in place to make it happen, you’re sure to fail. Wishing on a star isn’t going to make it a reality—regardless of what the fairy tales tell you.
Curmudgeonly grousing aside, I do get excited about the idea of a new year. It’s a fresh start and a new set of 12 months to succeed, start new projects, finish others and discover new things.
In the last year, I’ve released a new novel, a new children’s book and a short story. I’ve promoted the documentary project on lobster divers and appeared on national television for it. I’ve undertaken a new documentary project on West Virginia war veterans and conducted dozens of interviews for it. And that doesn’t include the projects I’ve done for others as a freelancer. All that’s kept me very busy, but for some reason I’ve been feeling as if I was missing something. I was having trouble keeping my plans straight and looking ahead.
I’m very visual person.  For many years, in jobs I’ve held for other people, I’ve used a year-at-a-glance calendar to keep things straight. I would find myself staring at the calendar to think through the steps necessary to make something happen and avoid conflicts. Now that I’m working fulltime as a writer, I kept thinking I was missing something in my office, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Until now.
A few days ago, I bought a 2013 vertical year-at-a-glance calendar for the wall in my office. I already have things on it as far out as July. That may be a little extreme for most people. Still, it never ceases to amaze me how soon St. Patrick’s Day comes after Christmas. Sometimes it seems like the two holidays are only a week or two apart. And right after that, it’s the Fourth of July. Just a few days after that, we’re looking at Christmas trees in department stores (unfortunately, that last one is often true as retailers keep making Christmas preparations earlier and earlier.)
The quote at the beginning is something I live by. We can all hope and dream all we want, but making a plan to make it happen is the key to everything. I talk to people all the time who tell me they want to do something or they have this great idea…but they don’t have a plan to actually get where they want to go. Without that, it will never happen.
Happy New Year!
Now go make a plan to do something and see how much faster it happens.

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Boxing Day and Winter Break

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My calendar says the day after Christmas is Boxing Day. When I was young, I thought that meant the day we cleaned up all the boxes from Christmas—and in some cases, that’s probably what it’s become.

The “real” history is a bit murky, although commonly it was a day when servants would receive a box with a gift of money in recognition of their service for the year—a Christmas bonus, if you will. Typically, servants worked on Christmas day. It became a holiday because the servants would then be allowed take the day after Christmas off to spend with their own families—sometimes with their box with money they would also receive leftover food and presents.
In more recent history, it has become another over-the-top shopping day (don’t we have enough stuff?) when people return gifts they didn’t want, use gift cards they received and help the stores clear off their shelves by taking advantage of deep discounts on things the stores couldn’t sell before Christmas. For those of us not afflicted by the shopping gene, but who do have children, it is also the first real day of Winter Break from school. From the last day of school until Christmas Day, there’s enough going on and enough to get ready for that Winter Break doesn’t mean anything. But come Boxing Day, or December 26, everyone is a little restless. The big day is over. We’ve spent the day with family and friends. We’re tired. But we also feel as if we need to DO something.
My daughters know that the day after Christmas, and the week after that, also means time to get out and explore a bit. Not that I create a schedule that is planned down to the minute, but I try to think of three or four things we can do that week to get out of the house and look around. Last year we went to Summersville Lake. The US Army Corps of Engineers had lowered the lake further than normal—below winter pool—to do some maintenance. Dad and I both scuba dive in the lake; it was fun to see the lake without all of that pesky water in the way.
We’ll end up at the WV Culture Center to wander through the history museum; or go to Blenko glass for a tour; or take a trip to the library or who knows what? We always find something to do that doesn’t involve watching television or laying around the house all week playing video games. I try to avoid overtly educational trips, preferring to keep the learning a bit more stealthy. But they do seem to learn a thing or two along the way.
The alternative is to box up everything from Christmas. But that sounds like work to me.

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Holiday Ghost Stories

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Have you ever wondered about the line from Andy Williams’ classic Christmas song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” where he sings, “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago”? In Victorian England, a holiday tradition was to gather around the fire place and tell scary stories. And think about the classic holiday ghost story, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. That one is scary and creepy enough all on its own.

Flash forward to modern day and the concept of flash fiction on the internet and let me introduce you to Advent Ghosts 2012 hosted by I Saw Lightning Fall. This is not a competition—there are no winners and losers—but rather a group of writers getting together to write their own spooky stories for Christmas. I’ve said it before, but horror stories and similar work are not really my genre (read my Halloween story if you’re interested in a previous attempt), but it’s fun to stretch your wings from time to time and try something new.
Flash fiction is a concept that I’ve never played with much, either. This particular project limits stories to “exactly 100-words long — no more, no less”. So, there’s the real challenge for this project; telling a story that will raise the hairs on the back of your neck in 100 words. Something you can read in a moment or two. It requires touching on the imagination as much as actually writing a story. (For the record, this introduction is nearly 300 words long…).

So, here it goes. My contribution to Advent Ghosts 2012.

 

A little bit of Grandma

“You have to give me the recipe for this mincemeat pie.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the last pie I’ll ever make. It has a secret ingredient and I’ve just run out.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“My grandma made it every Christmas with her grandma. She gave me the recipe. Now that she’s gone, I can’t make it any more.”

“Wouldn’t she want you to keep up the family tradition?”

“Like I said, she’s gone now. There isn’t any more left. If you do it right, there’s a little bit of grandma in every bite.”

 
If you want to read the rest of the contributions Advent Ghosts 2012, visit the I Saw Lightning Fall blog. Check back often. Loren Eaton will be adding stories all day as writers post their contributions.

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Happy First Day of Winter!

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A perfect snow day. The first day of the winter break from school, so the girls aren’t missing anything. It only amounted to a couple inches of snow and it was warm yesterday so nothing stuck to the roads. It wasn’t too deep so it made sledding hard, either. A warm fire in the fire place and hot chocolate afterward. Not sure how to top all of that.

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Christmas Traditions

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how much Christmas has changed since I was a kid. I wonder if we’re trying to make up for the loss of family those traditions with less important things like gift giving over-indulgence.  I hear people talk about buying gifts or spending too much money and running themselves ragged because they are “supposed to”.  Where is that written?

Obviously a lot has changed over the last 40 or so years; some for the good and some things not so much. I’m not going to be one of those people who, now in middle age, talks about how good things used to be “back in the day”.  Life changes and everything wasn’t necessarily better back then just because we remember it positively. We can’t go back anyway.

Still, some of my best Christmas memories revolve around helping my mom bake cookies and make fudge for the holidays. We didn’t make anything fancy, but it was all good. And that aroma said Christmas to me like nothing else.  I recall standing at our old gas stove stirring the fudge for what seemed like hours  (but was  closer  to 12 minutes) so it would set up just right.

I remember going through the JC Penny Christmas catalog and making up a wish list to give to my parents. The funny thing is, I know I got gifts and they were probably off that list, but I don’t remember Christmases for what I opened on Christmas morning.  I remember hanging around the house, playing with whatever I got and spending time with my grandma and my aunt when they did their Christmas day pilgrimage to all the family houses.

I remember putting Christmas music on the old console turntable and listening to Johny Mathis sing “O Holy Night”.  When I got a little older, I remember turning off the lights in the living room and staring at the big colored light bulbs on the tree while the music played.

 

Does that make me old? Probably so…in my daughters’ eyes at least. Still I want to make sure they have some of those same memories when they grow up so they can bore their own children when the time comes. That means it’s time to teach them to bake cookies from scratch and stir fudge for “hours”…so it thickens up just right. None of it will be healthy or calorie conscious, but all of it will be good to eat. And hopefully it will stick in their memories not just on their hands. Not because we are “supposed to” or any other such foolishness. But because we want to do it and it’s nice thing to do as a family.

Merry Christmas!.

Writing after a tragedy

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Right after 9/11 I spent some time questioning if what I was doing with my life mattered. I know I wasn’t alone. At the time I was working fulltime in the recreational scuba diving industry. It was my job to write about and teach about ways to make scuba diving safer. It was a good life and gave me chances to travel all over the world, but it definitely wasn’t finding a cure for cancer or ending hunger.

I finally concluded that while scuba diving might not change the world or earn me a Nobel Prize, it was important because people still had to relax. They still had to take vacations. They still had to unwind from their stressful jobs and do the things they loved to do. In some ways, it was probably more important for people to remember normalcy. At the time, I remember a lot of people using the phrase “If we change, we are letting the terrorists win.” It became a cliché, but it was true.
For the last year, I’ve been working for myself; writing books, blogging and creating documentaries. In some cases, they were serious pursuits and in other cases simple amusement. I was enjoying myself and thankful for the opportunity to create and express myself.
And then came last Friday and the killings in Newtown, Connecticut. I had the same feelings I had in 2001 after 9/11. I questioned whether I had anything to say, if what I was saying was important and how soon was “too soon” to return to writing about random things and humor. The next morning I wrote a blog post about a man I interviewed while the attack was happening , but other than that, there wasn’t much I felt like saying. I ended up going to two parties on Saturday, but I heard very little conversation about the school shooting. It seemed like no one knew what to say.
Tomorrow, my blog will be simultaneously posted online and in the local Neighbors section of the local paper. It’s about Christmas traditions and the idea of making memories with our families rather than focusing on the gifts and the stress of the holidays. I wrote the blog last week, several days before the tragedy happened. Honestly, in my mind, it is truer this week than it was last week.
I don’t know the answer to the “too soon” question and I’m sure it’s different for everyone. I think, in response to this latest national tragedy, we should focus more on our own families, our own traditions and our own relationships and what Christmas and this holiday season is supposed to be about.
I’m still not 100 percent comfortable with writing fiction and “fun stuff” but it is coming. There is a saying that “Writers don’t write because they want to, they write because they must.” It is probably a quote, but I’m not sure who said it. Life goes on and we still have to live. We just have to find our new normal. I hope we spend less time in the near future worrying about the little stuff and more energy on the stuff the really matters. And suddenly, I think, what really matters is different than it was a week ago.

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