All posts by D.A. Adams

D.A. Adams is the author of the Brotherhood of Dwarves series and the Sam Skeen saga. He received a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of Memphis in 1999 and taught college English for 16 years. He is the father to two amazing sons and resides in East Tennessee.
General Posts

Saturday Evening Ramblings

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I’ve been thinking about our culture and some of the obstacles we face for the future, and one thing that strikes me is our rabid need for the next big thing.  It permeates every facet of every part of our society.  Movie studios are striving for the next Star Wars.  The music industry is still trying to replicate the successes of  Elvis and The Beatles.  Video games are always about the next hot game.  Sports are always over-hyping young athletes well before they’ve earned the accolades and then lambasting them when they don’t live up to expectations.  When the focus is always on the next thing and then the next and then the next, what becomes lost is the past and the lessons it can teach.  Obviously the purpose of this is to sell things–tickets, products, magazines, advertising, but am I alone in feeling like this system is simply unsustainable?

Hollywood has been bankrupt of ideas for years and is left recycling scripts and franchises.  The music industry sucks and has for quite a while.  Mainstream music is more about style and image than music.  Video games haven’t hit the wall yet, but give it time.  Both MLB and the NBA have been in decline for a couple of decades because the leagues focus more on their major markets than on overall competition.  And there is a serious disconnect between the upcoming generation and anything related to the past.  My nieces had no idea who Willie Nelson is, and one of them likes country music.  My girlfriend’s son had never heard of Ronnie Lott, yet he aspires to play defensive back.  I could cite many more examples of this disconnect, but you get the point.

I’m not saying we should live in the past solely.  That would be just as foolish and would resemble the Classic Rock stations that have been playing the same fifty songs for thirty years.  What I do believe is that if we as a nation are ever to get back to anything resembling quality, we need to stop seeking the next big thing and find some balance between attachment to the past and movement to the future.  We achieve this by celebrating the greatness that has come before as much as we hype the new.  Whatever we do, we have to find a way to connect this generation to reality more so than they are now.  Otherwise, we aren’t going to have a culture to worry about.

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General Posts

Friday Afternoon Ramblings

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The idea was born nine years ago.  For an entire year, I ruminated over it, contemplating characters, developing the landscape, outlining the plot structure, but I didn’t pursue writing the manuscript.  I was too scared.  Graduate school had deflated me and nearly crushed my creative spirit, so I just let it live in my head, content to have it as my hobby.  Then, I saw my firstborn son’s heartbeat on the ultrasound for the first time, and a part of me woke up that I never knew existed.  This new man inside of me knocked aside fear, stood up to the graduate school bullies, and spoke from the very core of my being: You are a writer. Go write.

I listened to this new part of me and started The Brotherhood of Dwarves.  From the outset, I knew the story from beginning to end, not every detail, of course, more like the frame of a building before the bricks and drywall and trim, and I knew there would be at least five books.  Despite having not written in three years, I regained my discipline and wrote five and six days a week, hitting my page goal every day.  The more I wrote, the better it felt and the stronger my voice became.  I make no apologies for the first couple of chapters and cannot bring myself to give them a complete rewrite because of what they represent to me, my rebirth as a man and a writer.

I may never find real commercial success as a novelist.  I’ve accepted that fact.  While money would be nice and definitely wouldn’t be turned away, it’s not why I started writing in the first place.  I write because it’s who I am, who I’ve always been.  I chose to self-publish because I wanted people to read my work–I needed an audience to complete the story–and at that moment in history, the publishing industry was in a terrible state.  Since the economic downturn, it’s now a little worse.  I am proud of my decision and the risks I took.  Sure, I wish I had done things differently, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount in the last six years.  If I had it to do over again, I would in a heartbeat.

This morning on my way to work, I was overwhelmed with the need to complete this series.  The sensation filled me up and gave me a feeling that I can best describe as a bit of mania.  I saw the last two books before me, their plots stretching out to the end of the series, and excitement overtook me.  I’m a writer, and writers write, so as soon as book three is polished and ready to go, I will find a way to start on book four.  Even if there is never any economic success from this series, I will write it and bring it to market because that is who I am.  I’m a writer.

General Posts

Thursday Afternoon Ramblings

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It’s always staggering to me when people push things to an extreme but then act stunned when they have to face the consequences.  In this particular instance, I’m referring to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.  For nearly two years, the far right has gathered in hate-filled rallies with signs that read, “We Came Unarmed…This Time”  and “Signs Today…Guns Tomorrow” and “Party Like It’s 1773” and Sarah Palin has inflamed tempers at these rallies with phrases like, “Don’t retreat. Reload.”  And then, of course, are her now infamous ads with Democrats lined up in cross-hairs.

Then, someone takes all of this hate to heart, goes on a shooting rampage that kills six and leaves a couple dozen injured, and suddenly Palin and the Tea Party seem outraged that anyone could possibly point the finger at them for their hate-speech.

This was the work of a deranged individual working alone, they say.

Bullshit, I say.  Words have meaning and power, and when you use hate and fear to stir people into action, you are just as culpable for the actions of those “deranged individuals” who carry out your message as they are.  I’ve written on this blog before that the reason why the right scares me is because people like Timothy McVeigh, Jim Adkisson, and now Jared Loughner all took the venomous, hate-filled diatribes of the far right’s elocutionists and followed through with horrendously violent actions.  Against hate and intolerance, there is no reasoning, there is no discourse, there is no civility.  Hate will always spawn murder, and those who spew hate for self-gain and political expediency have the same blood on their hands and the person who parked the van or pulled the trigger.

The far left is no less guilty of using hate and sensationalism as the right.  It’s simply a miracle that we haven’t had similar shooting rampages by a “deranged individual” from that end of the spectrum.  What we need is more of what we saw at the end of last year–cooperation and compromise between the two sides and less extremism.  In short, we need moderation.  Until both extremes of both parties realize that we’re all in this together and we all need to find a way to coexist, there will continue to be more “deranged individuals” who take the inflammatory venom of people like Sarah Palin and commit atrocious acts at their indirect behest.