Ode to Dio

Ronnie James Dio has been one of my idols for nearly as long as I’ve been into heavy metal, roughly 35 years. I’m sure a lot of you reading this have no idea who he is, even though he’s been the lead singer of three of the most influential hard rock bands of all time (Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his own namesake band, Dio). He isn’t a vocalist who merely screams; he truly sings. He isn’t a lyricist who boasts of parties and drinking and bedding down women on the road, but despite the Dungeons & Dragons words he’s often known for, to me, his words were defiant and encouraging in the face of adversity under the guise of majestical settings. His voice and words have inspired me over the years, not only aspiring me to achieve my personal best, but to hopefully inspire others.

When I heard, just recently, that Mr. Dio had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, I felt a pain in my heart I hadn’t felt since the death of Dale Earnhardt.

No, I’m not signing Dio’s death warrant. He’s only been recently diagnosed with the illness and may fully recover. Yet, at the same time, like Dale Earnhardt, who represents my second greatest love (NASCAR), I tend to look upon my idols (even at my age of 46) as invincible, like nothing in the real world can touch them. I think, as one gets older, seeing one’s idols as being physically fallible is something of a wake-up call. It is like admitting your own mortality.

When Dale Earnhardt died, I was devastated. While he was alive, I was not a fan, even though I knew what he meant to the sport, which meant his untimely death dealt a blow I still feel to this day.

Ronnie James Dio had an even bigger impact on me. He was the first true celebrity I ever met (during a signing party of his first Dio album in Portland, Oregon). Though I only spoke to him for a few brief starstruck moments, I truly felt like he was interested in what I had to say, and took the time to answer my questions about his lyrics. I always told myself, if for some reason I would ever become famous for something, I’d like to do it with the grace and humility of Ronnie.

I discovered him through my teenage infatuation with Ritchie Blackmore, the Deep Purple guitarist who left the group to form his own band, Rainbow, with Dio as his singer. While I’ll always love Ritchie, I was blown away by Dio’s vocals and lyrics. The words themselves may sound a bit trite in the wake of Nirvana, but I think he understood that what makes great lyrics isn’t always the message, but simply how the words sound in conjunction with the music. And never did I doubt his sincerity when he sang...that was the important thing.

I’m making it sound like his lyrics are banal, while just the opposite is true. Ronnie James Dio wrote some incredible lyrics. Just check out “Heaven & Hell”, “Stargazer” and “Bible Black.” He can be as activist as early Dylan, as commentary any rap artist you’d care to name, and as down and dirty fun as any party band, often within the same album.

Above all else, the guy can really sing his butt off, even though he’s now in his 60s. Even if you aren’t a fan of the heavy metal genre, it doesn’t take a genius to know this man can sing.

As I get on in years, it does my heart good to see so many of my childhood heroes still plugging along, doing what they do best. Some don’t do it as well as they once did, but Ronnie James Dio has never let me down. Unlike a lot of other artists, I still pop open the CD booklet to read along as he sings, and I still love the way he turns a phrase and emotes certain lines in a verse for dramatic effect.

Here’s hoping Sir Dio continues doing what he does best, for many years to come. His is a voice that deserves to be heard for as long as there are ears to listen.

Shaken

While I’m waiting for Killer Cows to be released, I’m currently shopping around my next young adult novel, Shaken(though I'm thinking of changing the title). It’s about how a 9.7 earthquake (and subsequent tsunami) affects the lives of three troubled teens on one fateful night in a fictional coastal town.

Unlike the relatively upbeat and whimsical Killer Cows, this novel is a dark, violent homage to the disaster movies I loved as a kid (and still do), but this time through the eyes of these teenagers. While I love disaster movies and novels, their depictions of young people have always been pretty shallow. Either the characters are smarmy brats, helpless waifs, comic relief or so sickeningly sweet that they’d kill a diabetic.

Shaken tells its story almost exclusively through the eyes of these three teen characters. They don’t have snappy one-liners, don’t have any insights about their situation beyond their years, and definitely don’t provide funny or “awe, how cute” moments. I tried to make them as realistic as possible, meaning they aren’t always selflessly heroic, and often make the same errors in judgment real kids do (or real adults for that matter). Much of the book is about the personal changes these characters undergo in an extreme crisis.

At the same time, I wanted the novel to be loaded with the same action, destruction and violence as the FX-laden movies I love. Some of you may have noticed I have been comparing Shaken to movies, not other books. There’s a reason for that. Yes, I think there are some important themes of personal discovery present, but mostly, the book is intended to be fast and furious, best appreciated if read in one sitting (which a good reader could probably do in a couple of hours). In my queries to agents and publishers, I’ve called it Die Hard for kids.

Is This One of Those 'Circle of Life' Things?

“You wanted the best, you got the best...”

The first words uttered at the very first concert I went to as a kid, when I paid nine bucks to see Kiss at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. And for me, it WAS the best. Gene Simmons spitting fire and blood; Ace Frehley’s guitar literally smoking during his solo; Peter Criss’ drum kit rising 20 feet over the stage; Paul Stanley demolishing his guitar during the encore.

Kiss was never my favorite band, but I always liked them, even during the late 70s and early 80s, when it was no longer fashionable to admit so. Yeah, there were ‘cooler’ bands, such as Iron Maiden, Rush, Van Halen and Judas Priest (at least in my circle of heavy metal friends). But live? As far as I’m concerned, no one ever touched Kiss.

Bombs. Fire. Explosions. Kiss was, and still is, the only band in which you were blown away by the show even if you didn’t know a single song they played.

Music has always been a big part of my life, especially heavy metal. It’s the first music that pissed off my parents, and is now the music that drives my wife and kids out of the room. I listen to a lot of new stuff - nu metal, death metal, etc - but I also listen to the bands I’ve loved for decades, and try to convince my oldest daughter why that music is still great. She hates a lot of it, except for The Beatles (but who doesn’t love them?) and a select few songs by Iron Maiden and Slayer she’s mastered on Guitar Hero.

But you know what’s cool? A lot of the bands I loved in my youth are still around, still touring and still making records. Not just new records, but records which sound like they always did, regardless of what American Idol jerkweeds determine to be popular. It did my heart a lot of good to see that Kiss’ first album in ten years, Sonic Boom, is just as dumb and juvenile as the Kiss records I bought in the 70s (I don’t think anyone wants to hear a band like Kiss suddenly shift to singing emo crap about how misunderstood they are). It also did my heart good to find out that same record, for one week anyway, was the biggest selling album in the country.

And I think I know why. Kiss is sort of the hard rock equivalent of a James Bond movie or a McDonalds Value Meal: There may not be any surprises, but you know exactly what you’re gonna get.

So when it was announced that Kiss was coming to my hometown for a show, I didn’t need to ponder whether or not the huge ticket price was worth it. I bought tickets for me, my wife (who hates heavy metal) and oldest daughter (her first real concert, not counting Hanna Montana a few years ago).

This is a big deal to me, mainly because it sort of brings me full circle, in a music sense. Despite the fact these tickets were fifty bucks each (as opposed to the nine dollars of allowance money in costed me in the 70s), it’s cool that my oldest daughter’s first real concert is going to be the same as mine, with bombs, explosions and in-your-face metal anthems. In fact, when I actually asked her if she wanted to go, and when she heard the name Kiss, she replied with a hearty and enthusiastic “Yes!” She knew what Kiss was about.

I can’t wait for the show, not just because I like the band, or that one of my daughters will get a taste of my childhood, but also because even though both me and Kiss are getting up there in years, some things are always cool, even if they aren’t always fashionable. I’ll take one Kiss over a thousand U2s or Springsteens any day of the week.

The Waiting

Waiting.

Waiting sucks. This must be what it’s like to be a dog. Always waiting for a treat, for walkies, a scratch behind the ears, to go potty.

Of course, we all spend a lot of our lives waiting, too...in line at the grocery store, at the DMV, for tax refunds to show up in the mail, at traffic lights. And for me, being the only male in a house of wives and daughters, sometimes I have to wait to go potty, too.

But none of those compare to waiting for your first book to come out. As a writer, I never thought I’d say this, but its actually worse than waiting to hear back to hear from an agent or publisher to see if they are interested at all.

I’ve already gone through the final edits and revisions of Killer Cows with my publisher, and am now waiting for the galleys (how it’ll look when finally released) as well as the cover art. After that, I’ll have to wait even longer...almost a year.

At work, colleagues and students keep asking me when the book’s coming out, and when I tell them, they get this look on their face like, "Hey, why are you taking so long?" as if it were up to me. Hey, if it were up to me, I’d have already quit my day job so I could write full time (which is what some of my friends think I’m about to do). While I’m flattered they think I’m going to suddenly be rich, I’m not Stephanie Meyer (at least, not yet). I’m not expecting people to line up outside of Barnes & Noble at midnight to be the first to snatch up a copy of a book called Killer Cows.

At this point, all I want is to hold a copy of it in my hands. Maybe autograph one to myself. But I can’t right now. I have to wait...just like my dog.

No, I didn’t think my publisher was going to magically say abracadabra and blink my book into existence, but during my initial contact with her after she offered a contract, when she said Killer Cows was scheduled for release in the latter part of 2010, part of me was shocked. This wasn’t at all like the short stories I’d published, when the time from acceptance to print was just a couple of months. Barring any other obstacles, the time from acceptance to print for my book will be roughly a year and a half.

A lot can happen in that amount of time. The world could end. The local mega bookstore, where I always dreamt of seeing my books on the shelves, could go out of business. I could drop dead of a heart attack.

So I wait, just like my dog. It helps that I still have another completed novel to try and sell. I’d like to think that, with a bonafide publication to crow about to agents or publishers, that job might be easier. But even if not, it’s a nice diversion, and helps me forget how long I still have to wait before Killer Cows is released.

But maybe this is a good kind of wait, like when I was a kid on Christmas Eve, unable to sleep because I knew Santa was coming. Just like Christmas, it is pretty cool that what I’m waiting for is inevitably going to happen.

At any rate, as I write this, my dog is staring up at me right now, eyes huge, ball in mouth. He knows playtime is inevitable. I can relate, so even though my own personal wait is still long, I think I’ll end his.

Toys Gone Wrong

I’m sure many of you are familiar Mattel-owned American Girl series of pricy dolls, each of whom have their own biography which reflects the historical era in which they ‘lived.’ I always thought that was a cool idea, especially since the dolls provided historical insight from a girl’s perspective. A bit heavy-handed of a message for a toy maybe, but better than watching my daughters play with those hookers-in-training known as Bratz.

Then, while watching a news feature covering the release of the latest American Girl doll, all I could do was roll my eyes and say, "You’ve got to be kidding."

Gwen Thompson, the newest edition to the American Girl line, is homeless. Her back story includes being abandoned by her father, forced to live in a car and being picked on by her peers. A spokeswomen for the company came on TV to state the purpose of the doll was to increase awareness of, and sympathy for, homeless children.

That’s all fine and good, but couldn’t you do that with a TV show or school-sponsored program? Have we become so overly sensitive that the very toys we give our children must remind them of how bad other people’s lives are?

I’m not insensitive to the issue of homelessness, but come on...

It’s a toy. Toys are supposed to be fun. You don’t see a line of ‘God-I-hope-it-starts-this-morning’ Hot Wheels. You don’t see Little Tikes kitchen playsets complete with ants crawling on the counters and government-issued cheese in the fridge. To the best of my knowledge, there are no video games in which the object is to pay all your bills and still have enough money left for groceries.

What kid is gonna want this doll? What kid is gonna rip open a package on Christmas day, see her homeless Gwen Thompson doll, wrap her arms around her parents and say "thank you for making me aware of the issue of homelessness in this country"?

In a way, the very idea marginalizes the whole homeless issue, being that there is an American company trying to make a profit by appealing to one’s sensitivity, while ironically charging nearly a hundred bucks for this doll.

Then again, I’m reminded of some of the toys I had when I was a kid, and now lament the time I wasted playing with them. Such as my toy lawnmower which blew bubbles when I pushed it around the yard. Then one day, mowing the lawn became one of my chores, only this time, no bubbles. I wasted all those fleeting childhood moments pretending to mow the lawn when I could have pretended to engage in an activity that wouldn’t be something I’d need to do on a regular basis in real life.