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Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Evolving nature of Valentine’s Day

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My younger daughter just finished making Valentine’s Day cards for her classmates at Weberwood Elementary. She diligently assembled the pieces, addressed the envelopes and checked off the list of the kids in her class—more girls than boys in this case.

I remember doing the same thing as a young boy at Cross Lanes Elementary. I probably wasn’t as diligent about it and I’m sure I wasn’t as neat. There’s no doubt in my mind that my mom had to make me sit down and do it; probably the night before the school party. I also remember not wanting to give a card to one of the girls in my class. I’m fairly certain I ended up making a Valentine’s Day card for her, but I probably had to be made to do that, too.
When I was at Marshall writing for The Parthenon, I wrote a fairly cynical column about Valentine’s Day in which I suggested it was a manufactured holiday created by the card and flower stores to drum up business. I also wrote some about the history of the day, noting that the saint the holiday is named for was killed. (It’s highly probable I wasn’t dating anyone at the time.)  Historically, three Saint Valentines are recognized on February 14. All three were martyred. One Saint Valentine was killed because he performed wedding ceremonies for soldiers who were forbidden to marry.
The author C.S. Lewis described four types of love in the book The Four Loves: Storge is fondness through familiarity or family. Philia is the love between friends with a common bond…and also the root of the name Philadelphia (and why the city is called the City of Brotherly Love). Eros is love in the sense of “being in love” or loving someone. Agape is unconditional love, often referred to as Godly love.

Now that life has brought me full circle and I’m watching my daughters do things my parents had to make me do more than 30 years ago, I’m happy my daughter never hesitated to make a card for anyone in her class—not even any of the boys. In fact, the idea never occurred to her. I don’t get the feeling she did it out of sense of obligation, either. She wanted to do it and enjoyed the process.

In spite of everything going on around us – from war to anger to violence – and all the conflicting messages bombarding children today, maybe they are learning to love others simply for the sake of brotherly love. Music, movies and television try to tell us that Eros love is the ultimate goal. It seems like Philia love is what we need most today. Maybe the lesson is coming through.

Happy Valentine’s Day!.

Medal of Honor

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About a month ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Medal of Honor recipient Hershel “Woody” Williams about his experiences as a war veteran from West Virginia for the Voices of War documentary. Williams received his Medal of Honor for action on Iwo Jima during World War II. He took out seven Japanese pillboxes defending an airstrip. Four Marines were detailed to support and protect him as he used a flamethrower to destroy the enemy emplacements. Two of the Marines protecting him died doing their jobs. I found him to be a remarkable man and was awed by the visit.

Yesterday, I watched the ceremony as Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha received his Medal of Honor, the latest recipient of the highest military honor this country bestows and only the fourth to receive the honor from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was struck by the similarity between what Sergeant Romesha said compared to Williams.
The following video is a short excerpt from the interview with Williams talking about the Medal of Honor.

 

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Making stuff up

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01 GDWS cover art

One of the coolest things about being a fiction writer is that you can make up things you need to tell a story. Obviously, writers make up people all the time…or risk getting sued.

I’ve read books where writers have made up planets or technology. The key to making up things like that is even if you make up something totally different, it still has to have a basis in fact. Sci-Fi writers look at what’s available today and then extrapolate what might be available in the future. It’s always interesting to read some of the best science fiction from 50 years ago and then see how close they were to the truth. Still no flying cars, but we do have “communicators” that plug wirelessly into our ears that respond to voice commands.
I don’t write sci-fi, and all of my novels have been based on real locations I’ve visited (except for Cuba; still working on that trip) so you might think I don’t end up making up too much stuff. And that is where you would be wrong.
A few years ago, I decided to write a series of short stories. I knew I wanted to write about the ocean and diving, but I decided to do something different from what I had been doing. In my mind’s eye, I could see these short stories like a television series with a cast of characters in the same location. There would be some reoccurring characters along with new ones who came in and out as the stories evolved.
My first question was where? Where could I set this up that seemed believable? What location could have divergent story lines and themes? And then it hit me. I could make up my own island. From that, Withrow Key was born.
I decided to stay in the United States rather than going off-shore. If you’ve ever been to the Florida Keys, you know there are a lot of interesting characters there already. It didn’t seem like much of a stretch that I could have my own island with odd things happening on a regular basis. The first Withrow Key story was Going Down with the Ship. At the time, I knew some people involved in creating artificial reefs out of retired warships. Within months of each other, attempts to sink two ships got a little crazy as one ship sank ahead of schedule and the other rolled over on the surface, but didn’t sink until people had to board it again and cut more holes to let the air out. All of that came together in my mind to serve as the basis for that short story. It might not be science fiction, but I would definitely say it was a case of extrapolation from current events and wondering “what if?”
You can read an entire series of these short stories for free from my website. These stories are free to download, read and share. Just don’t change them or plagiarize them.
The most recent Withrow Key short story is available through Amazon. It is called Sea Monster.

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Recording Your Family History

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Over the Christmas holidays, I listened to my father-in-law and two of his sisters talk about their childhood growing up in Pinch, West Virginia. There was some disagreement between the three of them over who did what and when, but the thing that struck me was the stories they told. They were kids; going hunting, butchering a chicken and their father’s “issues” with driving. They were just chatting, totally unprompted, and my father-in-law even (mostly jokingly) told me to stop taking mental notes as they talked. I really wished I had my recorder with me.

Before I began the Voices of War documentary project to capture oral histories from West Virginia war veterans, I never thought about the power of an audio recording. I’d worked as a writer and as a photographer. Those were my tools to tell stories. For me, audio recordings were just a way to capture interviews that would then be used to write a story. I also thought video had pretty much replaced video. What was the point of just listening when you could see the person speak, too?

Audio has a distinct advantage over video though. People aren’t intimidated by audio. You can set up a recorder, hit the record button and then ignore it. Video cameras often make people self conscious.  They worry about the way they look and they fidget. And there is nothing more boring than a poorly lit video of a talking head. Audio recordings have power on a different level, though. You listen, rather than trying to watch. You hear a catch in the speaker’s voice when he thinks about someone lost. Or hear the pure joy when she thinks of a private time with her father. 

Smartphones and laptop computers have the ability to capture high quality audio. I have a free application on my smartphone that can record up to 30 hours of CD quality sound into a replaceable memory card. Ipods and other MP3 players have given us freedom to listen while we do other things, like driving or working out at the gym.

We live in an age where it’s possible to create Do-It-Yourself documentaries. Not the kind of documentaries that will get shown on public television and win us awards, but the kind that capture memories for future generations. My dad likes to tell stories. They usually begin with “Back in the day…” which always makes my daughters’ eyes roll. In 20 years, I’m betting they will want to hear those stories again and will listen with completely different ears…even if they do laugh at Papa Ralph.

If you want to record some family histories, but don’t know where to begin, check out the National Day of Listening from StoryCorps. That was an effort to record memories online on a certain day, but the listening wall is still open. There are some great tips on how to record and how to interview. You can also use a service called SoundCloud to record and share your recordings with friends and family.

Set up the recorder and listen. You won’t regret it.

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Lessons learned from watching musicians

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When I describe what it’s like to be an author working to promote my writing, I often compare myself to an independent musician selling CDS out of my trunk. You keep putting yourself out there, hoping to reach people, knowing some won’t pay attention, some will boo and a few will get it. And a few of the few who get it will buy what you have to offer.

It can be frustrating and disheartening. It can cause you to rethink your life’s goals. (Happens to me about once a week. Most days, I go do something else for a few hours and then pull myself back together and start again.) And it will also cause you to re-evaluate your definition of success.
Last night I got the chance to watch a dear friend of mine play and sing. Watching Jean Hanna Davis interact with her fellow musicians (Stan Bumgardner, Paul Greco and Scotty, a guitarist I don’t know) I was amused and impressed at how quickly they fell into playing. After a few minutes of chit-chat, they got to it. They had played together from time to time, but not recently. Still, all talented musicians, they said “Do you know…?” and off they would go. They followed. They led. They had fun. I’m sure there were mistakes. But, they didn’t seem to care and I didn’t hear them.
Watching them play and sing, I realized a definite difference between musicians and writers. We may hawk our art in similar ways, but where writing tends to be a solitary experience, music is best when performed in a group. Writers can support each other, but it is much more difficult to be collaborative.
I’m sure every one of them has dreams of making it “big”, getting a recording contract and playing to packed houses. Everyone has those dreams. But what I saw watching the foursome go from one song to the next was the joy of playing music. They performed for a small audience and had a blast. They played for themselves as much as anything else.
While I often compare myself to the musicians from the business side of the equation, I realize I need to spend more time on the “joy” of creating. Recently I wrote about my changing definition of success. I’m learning, and adjusting to the idea, that success is enjoying what you do and doing it for that reason alone. Everyone says that when you enjoy what you do, it shows, people notice that and that is when success begins. I always thought that meant that if you worked hard enough that the career would take off and you would make a mint. I’m beginning to realize that if you enjoy what you do and do it for the pure joy of doing it, that IS success. The rest is just details.
Check out a couple songs I recorded on my phone last night. The video is crappy, but the sound is pretty good.

 

 

 

 

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Begin with a spark

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When I write fiction, I begin with a spark of an idea and then the rest of the story grows around that. Cayman Cowboys was my first novel and really my first attempt at writing fiction. I was visiting Grand Cayman, conducting some training for local dive instructors, when a friend took me out to do a little sightseeing. After making a dive on the East End of the island, we stopped to look at the blow holes. Over the years, waves have eroded the iron shore—exposed and jagged limestone coral that now stands above the ocean surface—and when waves crash into the shore, water shoots straight into the air.

I remember walking across the iron shore thinking that if I fell, I was going to bleed. Heavily. And then I started thinking/imagining how scared someone would have to be to run across the iron shore and what it would do to them. That became the first scene I wrote for Cayman Cowboys. Afterward, I had to go back and get the story to the point that a girl would be so scared she would run across the iron shore and then had to create the story that came afterward.

Every one of my novels has that same sort of spark; a scene that literally popped into my head that caused me to start writing.

The following is an excerpt from my first novel Cayman Cowboys. It became the seed for the entire novel. It isn’t the key to the story (we don’t need a spoiler alert here), just where it started.

 

Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from an abandoned house directly behind where the men were meeting. They heard the sound of a young woman yelp in pain.

“Check it out and find out who’s in there,” Walker ordered. The Lincoln’s driver and both men from the third car rushed toward the house. Samson started to go as well, assuming this was one of the duties his boss was paying him for, but Walker reached out his hand and held him back.
Seeing the men come rushing out of the darkness, the girl, who was just sleeping in the house, ran out the side door to get away.
All three men shouted after her and one fired a gun into the air, hoping it would make her stop. It didn’t. Scared beyond all comprehension, the girl ran faster. She was a runaway, hiding out from her family and the law. Waking up from a sound sleep, she thought it was the police coming to take her back to her abusive father in the U.S. She had tried to run away before. When she was caught and taken home, the beatings were worse than before.
Quite possibly the last thought the girl had was that these men would never take her back to her family, no matter what happened. She ran from the sandy soil covering much of the island directly onto what the locals call iron shore, limestone rock left over from millions of years of coral buildup that has been eroded over the years by the rain to form jagged edges and crevices. Even in solid shoes, iron shore is treacherous. At night, with nothing more than sandals on her feet, no light and fleeing in a panic, the girl didn’t stand a chance.
Not being from the island, she had only set foot there just a few days before. Using money she had stolen from a small liquor store near her home to buy the ticket and a friend’s passport to gain entrance to the island, she had fled during the night. She had read stories in magazines about the island and thought it sounded like a wonderful place to escape. She hadn’t had a chance to learn the land yet. She didn’t realize just how treacherous running across the iron shore could be, especially down by the shore where the wave action had made things even more hazardous.
She fell. Hearing the men’s voices, she stood up bleeding from her shoulder and tripped again just a few yards away. This time she tore a jagged hole in her leg. In agony, she struggled to her feet and tried to run again. Turning to look, she saw the lights the men carried swinging back and forth. Knowing she had to get away, she struggled to her feet one more time, pain searing through her body, already dying from the increasing blood loss from a torn artery in her thigh, she fell for the last time in a crevice between the rocks at the water’s edge.
She could hear the gentle sounds of the small Caribbean waves lapping against the rocks and the iron shore coast. When the waves hit the shore just right, the water would work its way through the rocks and blast straight up into the air, like a blowhole from a whale.
“Do you see the girl?”
Nah, I don’t see anything. I’m not even sure there was a girl.”
“Someone was out here, but I can’t find her,” the men argued at the edge of the iron shore field.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not climbing across this stuff at night.”
“You’re right; she couldn’t have gone this way. Let’s check the other side of the road.” 

 

The thing is, there’s a spark in everything. Every project, every idea, everything you think about doing begins with a spark. The key to moving forward with anything is finding that spark, that idea that moves you and then building on it. Sometimes it will move forward in fits and starts and other times you will feel like you are going backward.

The most important thing is to keep fanning the spark. The rest will come.

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