Alright, a quick update to let you guys know what’s up. The Old Man of the Temple will be out shortly after Christmas. Start looking for it soon. I’ll be working over the holidays to see it done. All for now, will speak again soon.
ML&R
~D.W.
The Old Man of the Temple is going to be delayed by a few weeks. Look for it around October 20th. The release dates for The City Under the Mountain and The Oath of the Blade will remain unchanged. I lost a big chunk of time at the beginning of the month to sickness and a neck injury, and with school kicking up, it has taken a big slice out of my writing time.
Things are back on track, but as much as I hate to do it, TOMOTT will be pushed back.
Also, as some of you may have noticed, I’ve had some serious trouble with the website lately. Wordpress has been pushing out its updates, and it always causes some general fuckery with everyone’s sites. Mine has been no exception. I’m working it out, but I’m not a techie for a reason. Hopefully it will all be fixed soon. Yes–that’s the reason this update is so late in coming. I couldn’t even log in to the site for a long time, and then couldn’t update it. It has been a real pickle. By pickle, I mean a major pain in my ass.
Just a quick update.
Also, for anyone who may be confused about the reasons for the re-vamping of the series, look HERE.
Some of you might have noticed that Ye Olde Websyte was down for a few days. Wordpress pushed out it’s update, and said update decided to break my website’s legs, apparently. The old girl was down for a few days while I got it figured out, but everything is back to normal.
Just in time, because The Knife in the Dark is dropping this Thursday, September 1st.
I just wanted to remind you guys, maybe hype things up a bit. So get hyped.
Woot woot.
This is for my peeps over at The Smarter Artist.
There are three gorillas that writers wrestle with all the time–procrastination, word counts, and getting fat. We spend so much time getting everything just right, then ruminating on what we need to write for that day. We answer emails, we watch videos, we while away our time dreaming about what it’s going to be like when our book gets done. We stare at the screen when we finally do get ready, telling ourselves that things are just going to come out when they’re good and ready. Our asses get wider from the constant pressure we put on them.
Also the snacks.
Listen, I’ve been there. I’m there every day. I’m the type of person that beats myself up on a constant basis about how much I didn’t get done on any particular day. For a long time I trusted to the old way–forcing myself to sit in that chair until the damned chapter was done, dammit! That’s the way my grandfather would have done it–doggedly, until he defeated the book, or it defeated him. My only system was “GO,” and it had one speed setting that could be described on the whole as “You Could be Trying Harder.”
My system sucked.
A few years ago, something happened to me that forced me to reevaluate my life. I’m a veteran of both wars, and 
spent quite a lot of time in combat. Almost enough time, when taken consecutively, to have a bachelor’s degree in the subject. Before you go thinking that I got blown up by an IED or something–no. I made it through my deployments without a physical injury, but was in a minor helicopter accident my last year in the Army that screwed up my back. The whole thing happened on a training mission–imagine that. By the beginning of 2014, I was quickly losing the ability to walk like a normal person. The nature of the VA being what it is, I spent half of that year lying on my back, hating everything about my life, waiting for surgery. I was on so many pills that I had to take pills to counteract the pills. Needless to say, life tasted like ten flavors of shit. Add what people used to call “the soldier’s heart” to the mix, and my entire world looked like ashes.
This was my Crucible. It forced me to confront things. I’m sure you can imagine.
This is not to toot my own horn, or to elicit sympathy–far from it. I told you guys all that so you would know where I’m coming from, why I’m deciding to couch things in this language, and what my thought processes are. I told you this so you would get a better sense of who I was, and who I am. Every hero needs an Odyssey, right?
Toot toot.
I did finally have surgery, and began a long road to getting things back on track. Anyone who has ever had back surgery understands the tenuous nature of your body afterwards, and just how much it changes your life. Suddenly you have to be careful of the things you do, how you sit, where you sit, and for how long. I remember one instance of having fallen asleep on my brother’s couch, and having to drive myself to the emergency room the next morning, barely able to push the pedals. I was once a warrior, now laid low by furniture.
Working out is tough. Nobody wants to do it when it’s an obligation–let’s just be honest. It’s boring, it’s harder than you’d like, and it takes serious discipline that not everyone has. For me, pain was a serious concern. During the first year after my surgery, I was at about 25% operating capacity. A tough-looking guy–but weak as a babe. I figured out one enduring truth during this entire period.
People give up when we allow ourselves the pathway to defeat. We’re pleasure-seeking creatures, and especially creative types. Especially authors, because most of us are not only creative, but more than mildly obsessive. Flights of fancy is what we do, and we’re crazy enough about it all to write it down.
I realized that the only way to succeed was not to beat myself up, to force myself into the chair, or out of the chair. It was to arrange my life in such a way that I had no other option than to do what I needed to do. Instead of beating yourself up so hard, trying to mold your character, lamenting the entire time that you wish you could just change, just be better…I’ve been there. That is not the way. The way is to change your environment, change the way you structure your day.
You have to Pavlov yourself. The following is the way I’ve starting organizing my day, based on principles I used in the last year to lose 50 lbs, and rebuild my body into something normal. This isn’t an all-encompassing system, or anything. I’m not some motivational speaker promising you the best results EVER with this TRIED AND TRUE method–no. These are just things I do that help me, and maybe they’ll help you, too. There’s a bit of a philosophy behind it, but you can adopt some, or all, or none of these things. Some of you won’t need them at all. I just thought some of you might benefit from the ideas, and on the off-chance that I can offer a hand…well, I’ll offer it.
First–The Work Day.
1—Get up early and take a cold shower in the morning. I know it sounds crazy, but if ancient warriors could bathe in cold water, then so can you. If you can’t start cold, then start hot and finish cold. When I started, I washed hot and rinsed cold. The end-game, though, is to get to an all-cold shower. Believe me–it wakes you up and brings your mind into a sharpness of focus that you do not have if you take a nice, relaxing shower in the morning.
2—Get a productivity clock. I use my cell-phone and an app called ClearFocus. It goes in 25 minute increments of working with 5 minute breaks. Every fourth break is 15 minutes long. During the work period, you put down words, you revise, you edit, you do what you have to do. No snacking, no distractions. During the break periods, dedicate yourself equally to getting up and walking away. You can hover if you have something that absolutely needs to be put down, but if not, get up and walk away.
3—During your break periods, do one of the following: Push-ups, Crunches, Pull-ups, Squats, or a short Yoga routine. If you can only bang out one push-up, then bang out that one push-up. Every wall begins with a single brick, so start laying those fucking bricks. The best thing to do is rotate these exercises so that you do an equal number of all of them in sets that you can handle. My routine is thus: 75 push-ups one break, 50 crunches the next, 15 pull-ups next, 50 squats, or a short Yoga routine. Interchange these however you want, and don’t take my numbers for your own goals. Do as many as you can before reaching muscle failure and focus on the number you’ll do per set and not the total number. By the end of your day, you might be surprised to have found that you did 200 push-ups, or 60 pull-ups. Just worry about the sets, though. Substitute whatever exercise you want, but do something.
4—Have a daily word count goal, and meet that motherfucker. The way I do it is to set a target in Scrivener. Mine is at least 5k/day of new words, or at least one full chapter of revisions. Until you meet your daily goal, you’re not done. If you meet it in two hours, then good.
5—If you just have to get up and leave the book alone, go for a long walk. That’s the rule. If you take a break longer than the allotted time on your productivity app, then you have to go for a walk for at least 30 minutes. Also, the time starts back where you left it. But hey–you’re the boss, boss.
The whole point of this to hack yourself, and I’ll explain the way it has worked for me. First of all, the cold shower puts you in a state of mind conducive to energized thinking. You’ll be surprised how, over time, your body feels so different after your shower. You’ll feel like a marine on an Athenian warship. Hell, you may even start taking cold showers in the evening when you’re feeling lethargic. I do, sometimes. I might be a freak, though.
Secondly, the productivity clock will slowly train your mind to write better, write faster, and write when you command it to do so. Waiting on inspiration is bullshit–hack inspiration. When you give your mind hurdles to master, it reacts by adapting. We’re animals, all of us, and we’re meant to evolve. Just as genetic populations mold to their environs, we can mold our minds to harness our creativity. Over time, since I’ve begun using this method, my word count has steadily risen from approx. 800/hr to now around 1400/hr. It’s not Johnny-paced, but hey–it works for me. And it’s still going up.
The exercises during your breaks not only train your body, but they wake you up. If you need energy, the thing to do is not to sleep, or to rest, or to watch that last episode of Game of Thrones again–it’s to do something active. Besides, even if you bang out 100 push-ups during your break, you’re still left with 3.5-4 minutes of fuck-off time. As you spend longer doing this routine, your break times will seem like they last forever. I’ve found myself champing at the bit to sit back down and get started–which is one of the reasons you have to dedicate yourself to getting up. That reset helps to keep the mind fresh and excited.
Set your word counts as a division of how quickly you want to publish. I’m a sword-and-sorcery guy, so I’m trying to settle into a three month publishing cycle. My books are around 130-150k words each, and as long as I schedule things correctly, the 5k/day pace allows me to get things done without worrying about it. You may have noticed that as your word count per hour speeds up, your work day either gets shorter, or you can elect to get more accomplished. The whole point of doing things this way is that the ONLY number you need to stress over is your daily word count. No more stressing as you let days slip by, and you can see the day on the horizon when you’ve got to write 20k words just to make your deadline. Trust in the productivity clock, Pavlov yourself, and only worry about your 5k. You will be flabbergasted at the end of the week by how much progress you’ve made overall, and without even noticing. And you’ll slowly get faster.
THE RULES
These are things you’ll repeat to yourself when you’re being lazy. You know what I mean.
1–Don’t be a poon. Jocko Willinck, a former Army Green Beret and successful podcaster, once said a very direct, and very meaningful quote. “You know that thing you don’t want to do? Shut up and do it.”
2–Wars are won a battle at a time. Pay no attention to the entirety of how many words you need to write before your publish date, only worry about your daily counts. Small victories amount to a successful campaign.
3–Movement clears the mind. When you’re stuck, when you’re frustrated, the best thing to do is go for that long walk, or do a 30-minute Yoga session. The Spartans knew this, Yogis knew this. We have forgotten. Remember.
4–Take time to pay the Muses. I’m non-religious, but I do something I call “Yoga for Dionysus”. Mostly it’s because I’m a nerd, but part of hacking my mind is adding in a bit of reverence for the process. I sacrifice something on the altar of the universe in thanks for my inspiration. I know it’s anthropomorphism. I know it’s dumb. You don’t have to do it, but it helps me to remain grounded. And hey–Yoga’s good for you. This can be anything, though. Dedicate your run to the gods, read a book and absorb some culture, go to church if you’re religious, whatever. Spend some time cleaning your apartment once a week, just do something.
TAKE THINGS FURTHER
If you want to go even deeper, integrate a fast into your daily life. This is all completely optional, but this part is especially optional. I know not everyone is a freak like me. One thing that I do is only allow myself to eat during certain hours of the day. There are many mental and physical benefits to fasting, you can read all about them on the interwebs. There are many ways to do it, though, and most revolve around having a window within which you allow yourself to eat. Outside that window, it’s all water for you, bub. Try the following:
16 hour fast/8 hour eating window
18/ 6
20/ 4
You can also mix in 24 hour-long fasts, but its all up to you. Believe me, though–integrate the 20/4 eating habit with the workday outlined above, and you’ll start to lose weight without having to slice out a huge chunk of gym time every day. Fasting works much like everything outlined above–the more you do it, the better at it you become. Plus, eight hours of your fast will be sleepy-time, anyway (depending on your own habits).
Maybe some of this crazy stuff will help someone, and maybe I just spent forever typing this for no reason. This is my sacrifice on the alter of The Smarter Artist, though. This group, and the SPP guys, have helped one salty war vet get his shit together, so a man wishes to give something back. Maybe it’s a metric ton of crazy, but maybe it will help someone. It has certainly helped me.
Much love and respect to you all.
And now it was that Devla, daughter of Light and Shadow, she of the Eternal Cycle and source of life, looked down upon the creation of her husband, Evmir. “I see your mountains,” said she. “I see your lakes, your rivers, your storms and snow. But your creation is not yet whole.”
She hummed first a lullaby, for the world was a babe in the Void. Devla passed the world thrice through the flame, warming it with the Light of her father. As her song was hummed to the world, it began to awaken from it’s barren slumber. All things green and growing rose from the dirt, awakening to her song.
She then went down amongst the mountains, lakes, rivers, and the sea, and everywhere she went, she danced to her wild song. She swam through the ocean, and all the fish sprang forth from her, to swim alongside. From there she went to the land, and danced among the fields and forests, giving birth to the beasts of the hunt. So mad was she with ecstasy for the dance that she rose into the sky, and birds came tumbling from her hair.
She danced for a thousand ages, until all of Eldath was seeded. It is the reason Devla is called Mistress of Beasts, Lady of the Hunt, the Eternal Mother. The world was no longer a babe, but had bloomed as the rose in spring. Now the other gods saw her beauty, and came to give their blessings.
~From The Epic of Creation, stanzas 12-15
And his brother Eindor, the Wise God, he who won the Staff of Secrets by giving up his eye, the source of wisdom and Father of Magic, saw what Evmir was doing. Eindor looked out over the world, at what his brother had wrought, and knew that it was incomplete.
“Brother, let me add to your grand creation, for nothing so beautiful should be without secrets.” And so Eindor went down among the valleys, he walked over the barren rock and stood atop the highest mountains. There, he whispered secrets to the world. He told tales to the stone. He sang songs to the sea, and storms grew in his wake.
So it was that the world was imbued with magic, and the stars all turned to see.
It is for this reason that Eindor is called the Father of Magic, because all magic comes from him. It is for this reason that Eindor is also called the Whisperer, the Wise God, the Patron of Secrets.
And now the world had magic, but still it was incomplete.
~From The Epic of Creation, stanzas 7-11
Before the world was, the aether was formless, without sight or sound. There was only the Void–black, deep, and unknowable. For cycle upon cycle, infinite in number, the darkness remained.
There came a time, though, that the great god Light grew restless, and called his wife Shadow to his side. They danced through the emptiness, and Light took her out in the great expanse. He filled her with uncountable children, and Shadow gave birth to the stars, each one a child of their union, each with its own name. The stars were many, and unknowable.
When the two came to the end of their dance, Shadow asked her husband to grant her a child that she may love for her own, instead of scattering them to the corners of the Void. Light so loved Shadow that he granted her wish, and gathered her close. Their dance was so vigorous that Light gave Shadow not one child, but five.
These are the five older gods–Evmir, Eindor, Devla, Neesa, and Aeglar.
Evmir was first to come forth, with a battle cry that shook the aether, and a storm of lightning. So it was that Evmir was called the oldest, and the kingship of the aether fell to him. For his father and mother–Light and Shadow–wished to sleep, so to better hear the dreams of all their many children throughout the Void. Light forged for Evmir a great hammer, a parting gift from father to eldest son, and took Shadow into the vastness of the Void.
So it was that Evmir looked out across the vastness of the black, and knew that something must be done. He took up the Hammer of Light–the gift from his father–and smote it down upon the aether. He did this many times, over and over, until the world began to take shape beneath the blows of his great hammer. It was in this way that Evmir forged the world.
~From The Epic of Creation, stanzas 1-6
In keeping with my current fascination with Greek mythology (perhaps because I’m currently taking a really good class on the subject) we’re going to talk today about the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. For those of you who don’t know her–and I’m using the term ‘her‘ to refer to a position and not an actual person–the Delphic Oracle was a very important figure in the ancient world. Even kings and conquerors visited the Oracle–the Pythia–and heeded the prophecies which she handed out.
One such story is the story of Croesus, the King of Lydia. Croesus was one of the richest people known in ancient history, and was apparently wealthy enough to warrant his own epithet in common language–someone would be said to have been as rich as Croesus. Croesus wondered whether he should go to war with Cyrus the Great, who was unifying lands that would soon become what we know as the Achaemenid Empire–or the Persian Empire. Cyrus deserves ten posts dedicated completely to him on his own, but he’s not the subject of today’s little rant. Croesus, before making such an important decision, visited the Pythia to ask for her prophecy. The Pythia responded with something like “If you go to war, you will destroy a great kingdom.” Croesus gathered his forces, went to war with Cyrus the Great, and was subsequently crushed. The Pythia had given him a truthful answer–it was his own kingdom, though, that he destroyed. Other famous visitors to the Pythia included Lycurgus, Solon, Philip II of Macedon, Cicero, and the Emperor Nero.
How did one petition the Oracle to receive a prophecy from Apollo? Let’s see if I can simplify it.
First, the applicant had to purchase a sacred cake at a fixed cost, and leave it on the altar outside. From there, the applicant moved inside and sacrificed a goat, or maybe a lamb, carefully guided through the process by the priests. Once the sacrifice was made, the petitioner was allowed into a room where they could hear the Pythia speak, but not see her. The Pythia would have the question posed to her by the priests, who would interpret her ramblings from the state of enthousiasmos (“divine enthusiasm”) and translate them into the form of an epic poem, which would be presented to the petitioner.
The Pythia, on the other hand, had her own preparations to make. She either bathed in, or drank from, one of two
“sacred springs” at Delphi in order to purify herself. She chewed, or maybe burnt, Laurel leaves–the sacred tree of Apollo–to prepare herself to receive the god. She then went into an enclosed space, and climbed onto a tripod which sat over a chasm, breathing in “sacred” vapors that would send her into the trance-like state. Plutarch described the vapors as being “sweet,” and even described an instance where the Pythia died as a result of too much divine inhalation.
The thing is, there weren’t any springs found at Delphi that ran through the temple, nor was any chasm discovered at the site. Scholars long believed the tales to be fanciful, perhaps to try and explain the trance-like state into which the Pythia would put herself. Reading some of the papers, the words scoffing at the idea of “sacred vapors” practically get up off the page and sneer at you. The quickness with which ancient sources, like Plutarch, were dismissed is wild to read. One such account by a man named Diodorus Siculus–a Greek historian who visited the site at Delphi and wrote about it–were completely shat upon by the establishment.
A summary of what Diodorus Siculus had to say about the Pythia at Delphi:
“In Diodorus’s narrative, it was this chasm, and the powerful vapor that emerged from it, that led to the initial discovery and installation of an oracle at Delphi. He recounts the story of how a goatherd noticed that
his goats, approaching a particular hole on the mountainside, started to shriek and leap around. Goatherds began to do the same when they approached, and also began to prophesize. The news of the spot spread and
many people started leaping into the hole, so “to eliminate the danger, the locals appointed one woman as prophetess for all. They built her an apparatus [the tripod] on which she could be safe during her trances.”
~From Oracle, Princeton University Press
Diodorus Siculus came along, talked to the locals and said “look everybody, this girl is basically just getting high.” Scholars have long discounted his story as fanciful, saying that he probably had trouble imagining that the spirit of the god of Apollo could enter the Pythia, because Greeks had strange notions of the spirit–a lot of mental back-flipping to explain away his account.
The funny thing is, in the year 2000 a group of scientists published a *study in Geology magazine about the site at Delphi. As it turns out, Delphi sits at the center of two fault lines, and has been a hotbed for seismic activity since ancient times. There were recorded earthquakes there in the past. The scientists were able to not only identify the faults with modern technology, but determined that a spring probably flowed through the Temple of Apollo at one time, and that a chasm probably did run through the Temple of Apollo. Furthermore, though scientific methods, they determined that the rocks beneath the Temple of Apollo at Delphi produce a gas called ehtylene. Ethylene was used as an early anesthetic, and can produce feelings of detachment and euphoria. In higher doses, it can cause mania and death.
The kicker? Ehtylene has a sweet smell. It was also found in natural springs near the site.
Just imagine this one staggering fact–the fate of kingdoms, of empires, was partly decided by the ravings of an old woman who was sitting in an enclosed room huffing gas for most of the day. This is why I love history.
It took just over two thousand years, but in the end, Diodorus Siculus was vindicated. Turns out his story makes a lot of sense, and is further backed up by the writings of Plutarch on the matter. So raise a glass in the man’s honor sometime, he deserves a libation or two.
*The link goes to Nature magazine, but it’s a story about the same study.
In case you missed it, Child of the Flames is now available on Amazon Kindle. Get your copy today!
I’ve been thinking about this lately, so I figured I’d write some of it down. Maybe you guys will find this as interesting as I do. Maybe you’ll just think I’m morbid.
I want to talk about the Maenads. Now, some of you are raising your fingers in the air, saying “Hey, I remember those from True Blood!” Some of you might know more about them than that, and might be saying “Aha! He’s talking about the crazed followers of Dionysus!”
True, and true. More than that, though, I wanted to write down a few stray thoughts I’ve been having about their rituals, especially the culmination of their rituals. Let’s go into more detail–bloody, gory detail.
So, Dionysian rituals were famous for being revels of complete abandon. In fact, that was sort of the point. There are lots of festivals dedicated to Dionysus, now, and they were varied. Before someone decides to flay me for leaving out the City Dionysia, or dithyrambs, or the fact that they were the origins of Greek tragedy, I know–but we’re not talking about all of that today. Though, I suppose my penchant for writing fiction has its origins in Dionysian ritual.
Give your thanks to Dionysus, you pitiful little mortals.
The Maenads were the crazed female followers of Dionysus, the priestesses of the god of the grapevine. They were known by the animal skins they wore, the wreaths in their hair, the fact that they danced barefoot, handled snakes (they got there first, Pentecostals), and the thyrsus–a rod wreathed in vines, and topped in leaves or pinecones.
The Maenads went up into the hills to perform wild rituals by the moonlight. In short, imagine a bunch of intoxicated, crazed women dancing until they’ve worked themselves–and everyone else–into a frenzy. The whole point was to reach something called ecstasis, a religious fervor so great that it sent everyone into a state of abandon. At the height of this fervor, an animal would be tossed into the center of the crowd.
There, it would be torn limb from limb by hand, and eaten raw by the frenzied mob.
This practice is called omophagia. Now, the weird thing about this practice is that it’s not exclusive to the worship of Dionysus–or his Roman counterpart, Bacchus–it actually turns up in different places all over the planet. In places where primitive tribes have been met with more advanced chroniclers, there have been rituals described that bear striking resemblance to those of the Maenads. Dancing crowds, intoxication, abandon, and at the height of the rituals, no matter the details–omophagia. In Divine Madness, there was a scene described in Africa where a ritual took place that bears such a startling resemblance to those of the Maenads that I had to read it twice. One horror story even mentioned a woman who, at the height of her religious fervor, tossed her baby into the crowd, where it was subsequently torn apart and devoured.
Frightening.
Most people regard the practice as having arisen from Dionysus’s birth myth–that he was ripped apart, but born again. But others believe that Dionysus was the representation of something older, something more ingrained into the human psyche. Dionysian rituals represented a return to the primitive, a regression to something more brutal. What strikes me as odd is how often the practice pops up in history, and throughout cultures who haven’t heard of one another. Does it serve some purpose in society–perhaps an evolutionary release valve of our more brutal instincts, like an ancient version of the Purge?
I’ve become really intrigued with Dionysus. His worship was so varied in scope, and so wild in its extremes. On one hand, you’ve got the origin of Greek tragedy, and a god who relishes in the heights of human creativity. On the other hand, frenzied mobs ripping apart animals with their bare hands and eating them raw–the depths of human depravity.
Another interesting aspect was how afraid the Romans were of the worship of Bacchus. They outlawed his cult, and sought out those who practiced the rituals. There are all sorts of wild stories about the worship of Dionysus/Bacchus. Alexander’s mother was apparently a follower of Dionysus, and there’s even a story that the wife of Spartacus was a priestess of Bacchus, though I’m not sure of the second’s credibility.
So, yeah. I just wanted to take some time to share these weird little thoughts with you. I really don’t know why.
~D.W.
