John D Reinhart

Cooler Heads

Following up on yesterday’s fearful diatribe, let’s us think for a minute, you and me.

IF the aliens use this hydrogen technology for fuel, they can’t be using a lot of seawater. All they use is a single hydrogen proton at a time. Seriously, how much water do they need, when, like, a teaspoon will get ’em from here back to the planet Zemnar, or wherever they live?

I mean, with global warming, the sea level is actually rising. That means they must know there’s plenty to go around.

If they were all that afraid of us, we’d be zapped back to the stone age already. That we’re not means we’re more of a sideshow than a threat.

The big WHEN of our cracking the hydrogen proton puzzle is decades away, and is still a pretty big IF.

And all of it is just theory in the first place.

So, until they land on somebody’s front lawn and say “yes, we’re using a proton-fission engine to create spacetime bubbles around our ships while we harvest droplets of your seawater for fuel and if you interfere with us we’ll zap you into non-existence,” I don’t think there’s all that much to be afraid of.

OMG, what if they land on MY lawn?!? I’ve got to go mow it right now!!!

I Have No Crackers

You know me, right? I like funny stuff, and writerly stories and stuff like that, right? Well, I just had the crackers scared right out of me. Right out.

I just finished reading Luis Elizondo’s book Imminent, you see.

It’s about UFOs, although they are now called unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP. They changed the name because our Navy ships have reported seeing vast, glowing orbs beneath the bubbling waves. And because of the Roswell crashed ship (no longer flying).

This author is the former top CIA guy who ran the UAP program for the Department of Defense and has worked closely with guys like General Jim Mattis and Senator Harry Reid. He’s legit.

He’s now gone public because he believes UAP are an IMMINENT THREAT not just to the country, but to humanity itself.

Because. They. Are. Real.

That’s pretty creepy, but here’s what scared the crackers out of me:

We’ve all heard about UFOs darting this way and that, super fast but usually silent. If you’ve seen one, and I have, you ask yourself how could they do that?

Well, Elizondo’s scientific team figured out that alien spacecraft have an energy source so profound that it warps spacetime. They travel through our atmosphere in a spacetime “bubble,” separate from our own atmosphere, yet passing through it. The bubble warps spacetime, allowing them to dart and dash around us and travel vast, galactic-sized distances in the blink of an eye.

The only way to generate so much energy that we know of is to split the proton of a hydrogen atom – we split the atom itself to make hydrogen bombs. Splitting the proton inside the atom releases way more energy. It works out in Einsteinian physics. (In a timely aside, I was reading about our own experiments with that just last week.)

So, these spacecraft probably run on hydrogen.

That’s why they’re here: our vast oceans are huge hydrogen reservoirs.

So it’s not about us, and never has been. We’re a convenient gas station. They’ve only ever been interested in our water.

Except that the UAP have frequently been seen hovering around our nuclear facilities.

Which means that now it is about us, because we’re starting to dabble with those super-high levels of energy ourselves. When we split the hydrogen proton, we’ll be a competitor for their fuel supply.

Elizondo’s team reasons that this is why aliens have been abducting humans – to learn our physiology. It explains the crop circles and the mutilated cows – to figure out what we eat.

He tells very scary stories of UAP starting and stopping our nuclear missiles – shutting down banks of silos, and actually launching a rocket, only to shut if off the last second before it left the silo. And shadowing our aircraft carriers and charging our aircraft. All to figure out and test our military capability.

They don’t want to invade us because they don’t care about us.

They’re just learning how to wipe us out because we’ll be a competitor. An annoyance.

If that doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, there is one more little data point: we have utterly no defense against them.

Now, Elizondo is a security guy with 22 years in the Army and CIA. He’s got that kill-or-be-killed mindset, and that’s why he sees them as a threat. But he makes it clear that we are no longer the dominant species on this planet, and probably haven’t been for a long, long time.

Now, maybe the aliens will welcome us into their spacefaring community. Maybe it’s not dire. I keep thinking that, like the Europeans first visiting the New World, there are different nationalities, perhaps races of UAP. In that case, maybe they won’t act in concert to eliminate us.

But we have no value to them. We’re like gnats, except when we start dabbling in that level of power. Then we’ll be an annoyance. Pests.

It makes me very sad to think that this could be our fate, that you and I could somehow be zapped out of existence, rather in the blink of an eye, I would hope, over reasons we’ll never quite understand.

Normally I’d make a closing joke, but, honestly, I don’t know what to think.

Read the book – Imminent, by Luis Elizondo – and see what you think.

Thanks for staying with me all these years!

Lost in a 3D Purgatory

I would say “3D Hell” but I saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this week, and much prefer their version of H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks (because I won’t write hell.)

These times, they are a’changin’, and not so much in a way that you’d kind of expect.

My office is actually my bedroom, well, our bedroom, but it’s my office. Well, this little corner over here is my office, because, really, it’s our bedroom. My wife’s office is over there, in a former, not our, bedroom, and it really is an office. My office is this kinda cool, sorta funky desk/shelf combo we bought at Staples for $180 and I screwed together with that tiny hex wrench designed to strain your fingers… I digress.

I’m listening to zen music, a piece called E V E Beautiful Ethereal Ambient Music designed to calm you down, help you destress…

You see, earlier this evening, my wife was in Ohio, heading into Indiana at 10 at night Ohio time in a snowstorm, with a plan to drive all the way to St. Louis, which was, like, another 3 hours. But she was open to staying the night in Terra Haute, Indiana.

Mr. Gallant (that’s me) got her a room in Terra Haute, on Highway 41. I texted her the address, 3300 Highway 41, like a nice guy. Turns out there are TWO 3300 Highway 41 locations, you see, and I forgot to include the word SOUTH in my text.

So she’s driving down dark, sorta scary, snow-covered roads, farther and farther away from Interstate 70, going the wrong way into the wilds of Terra Haute. Finally she calls, frustrated and cold and sort of furious, and we sort out my little oversight. oopsie.

Now I’m a little stressed. So, I thought I’d, you know, take an audio chill pill and listen to Beautiful Ethereal Ambient Music, see? But the Internet signal in our bedroom is spotty, and the freaking thing keeps shutting itself off. And I’m getting….A. Little. Frustrated.

So, the point of this whole diatribe is to tell you another of my brilliant ideas. This one’s sure fire.

I found a company that makes little cars, see? Well, I have a passion for little cars. And they don’t have any fun animations on their website.

Why, if I was to cleverly build up a nifty little world in the free Blender 3D software, I could make them a video that shows my filmmaking genius to a tee and get them to hire me.

The company’s in New York, see, and I’m moving to New York in about 18 months, so it all works out brilliantly.

Except my Internet keeps cutting out and the freaking Ethereal Music is getting on my nerves and my wife’s stuck in a snowstorm in freaking Indiana because I sent her off in the wrong direction and now she’s mad at me and my copy of Blender keeps dropping out and screwing up my carefully organized little car files and my book is crummy and I just don’t think I can do this anymore.

I can’t do this anymore.

At this moment, it all seems so darned hard. So hard.

It’s a challenge, and I come from a long line of challenge-run-away-fromers. I’ve bucked the trend so far, but sometimes the old run-and-hide routine seems mighty alluring.

My wife’d kill me, though. She’s already mad at me, so it wouldn’t be much of a step to go to flat-out murder…

Wait, what is all this nonsense?

So here’s the writer’s story for you: you are your own worst critic. When it seems time to give up, time to run away, that’s the time to sit down at your computer and bang something out, because when you’re tired or stressed, you tell yourself the dumbest things.

My book is flat like last week’s Coca Cola. I get it. I see it. There’s a way to make it unflat, I know. When I find that way, heaven help the poor sod that keeps me from the rewrite!

My wife made it to the hotel, no thanks to me, and the Internet is back on. I think I know what’s wrong with Blender, and the little car video idea is actually a good one. The picture in the header is a neighborhood I’ve been working on. Not so bad…

Maybe I’ll run away next week. You know, honor the family and all…

Politic: Tariffs Explained

I promised myself I would keep my mouth tightly sealed throughout this election season. But then Barack Obama interrupted my YouTube music program and told me I need to do something.

Well, here I am.

Here’s an example of how a tariff works. I’m pretty certain they all work in this fashion. I’ve been mentally explaining this to my Trump-flag waving neighbors:

For $10, I just bought a nifty little flashlight from Lowe’s. It’s LED and has batteries and three modes and is really nice.

It’s made in China.

We’re using round, simplified numbers for the sake of example.

I paid $10 for it, but Lowe’s, in order to pay their lease and their employees and their insurance, only paid $5 for it.

They bought it for $5 from a distributor who provides this kind of product to big retail chains. In order to pay his lease and his employees and his insurance, he marked it up to $5 from the $2.50 he paid for it.

He paid $2.50 to the importer, who… employees, insurance, etc., marked it up from the $1.25 he paid to the Chinese manufacturer.

Now, suddenly, there’s a 100% tariff on all goods coming from China.

The importer has to pay $1.25 to the Chinese manufacturer, and another $1.25 to the US government.

He can’t pay his employees or his lease or his insurance if he doesn’t raise his price, so he passes the increase on to the distributor. Instead of $2.50, the price now has to be $5.

The distributor has lost all of his profit on the flashlight at $5, and now must sell it for $10 to Lowe’s.

Lowe’s is big, big, but they can’t sell a product at cost or they’ll go out of business.

Now, when I go to buy another flashlight, son of a biscuit, it’s $17.50! Seems like just last month it was only $10!

At that price, it’s not such a good deal. Maybe I don’t want a new flashlight.

So, I don’t buy the flashlight – almost nobody does. Lowe’s actually stops selling them.

The distributor takes a huge financial hit on one of his biggest money-makers, and has to lay off half of his employees.

The importer goes out of business altogether because nobody in the US is buying what he imports. He lays off all of his employees.

Over time, the Chinese manufacturer will see that they are selling fewer flashlights to the US market, and will either make them more cheaply, or quit making them altogether.

At that point, the Chinese economy is hurt by the tariff.

Until that happens, it’s you and me paying the price of the tariff. And Lowe’s, and the distributor, and the importer.

A tariff is a tool, but it’s not a good concept of a plan for our economy. It hurts our country first.

That’s why I’m urging you, whether you’re red, purple, blue, or of no color whatsoever, to vote for Harris/Walz. Here’s a link to their website.

Choose freedom.

End of commercial.

Trying to Talk about the Ocean

It’s been a minute, I know, since I last wrote about anything serious. I know, I get it.

But my wife’s left me for a baby – a grandkid on the other side of the country. She’ll be back next week, after leaving me to my own devices for a week and a few days. Me, three dogs, and a cat.

The dogs are all upset – I know this because they leave “little bombs” in the most curious places. Oh, yeah! I have to clean that one up, too!

I got in a major car crash last week – rear-ended on the freeway that totaled my wife’s little car. I’d taken it to save on gas – her suggestion, you know. Blammo! They, they came from behind! I’m okay, car not so much.

Somebody, and I don’t know whom, left a plate of yellow citrus fruits on one of my front columns – we have these sort of three-foot-tall columns around the edge of our corner lot – with a sign that said “Limes – free!” and a smiley face.

First, they were lemons, not limes. Second, my house is not a place for you to give away your stuff. There were easily a dozen lemons on the plate – not your friendly “I thought you might like these” kind of plate that normal people put on the porch. Not. Going. To. Happen.

I distributed the “limes” into the compost bin and put the plate back out on top of the column. But I set up a camera, see, so I could see who came back for the plate. They were too sneaky: the plate’s gone and the camera missed them.

It’s because I’ve been binging “Monk” on Netflix in my wife’s absence. If you don’t know, he’s a germophobic Rain Man sort of character who is also a brilliant Holmesian detective who lives in modern day San Francisco. I had no idea there were so many murders there!

It’s a cute show- the acting is good and they’re good at finding awkward places to put a guy who’s terrified to shake hands. Although he’s brilliant, he can’t make simple yes-no choices. So, who do they volunteer to be the Little League umpire? Strike! or ball. No, no, strike. or ball. Do over, please!

So, I’ve been thinking about that movie Soul. It’s a Pixar piece about a musician’s lost soul trying find his way to the promised land.

All he ever wanted to do was play “the big time” – to be a real musician.

Someone tells him this story – I know I’ve told it to you before: a young little fish swims up to the old fish and says “I’m looking for the ocean.”

“Son, this IS the ocean.”

“Nah, this just water!”

I’ve been thinking about writing, and realizing that I’m still looking for the ocean. I’ve written about this before, too, I know.

Hey, it’s been a tough week, okay?

I am so lucky to do what I do for a living. I’m a technical writer for the marketing department of a major manufacturer. I’ve been tasked with producing videos – marketing videos, social media, promotion pieces, training videos, safety videos. I love writing them, and doing the voiceover, and then shooting the footage and building the animations and editing it all together.

There’s this movie-industry-standard 3D rendering software called Cinema 4D that I use to create animations for these things. Because of that, now I get to produce the website renders of the company’s products as well.

It’s a terrific job, and I absolutely love what I do.

For all that, I’m still looking for the Big Time. I was thinking about it today, thinking all of the “yeah, but” things you say when you’re trying to make yourself feel small.

And then came that voice. It sounded like the late James Earl Jones:

“Son, this IS the ocean.”

I don’t know if I should be elated or disappointed.

My wife just needs to come home!

The Thing I Missed

You know how it is, when you’re on a date, and the person on the other side of the breadsticks has that certain something that drives you to ask more and more questions because you don’t really care what they’re talking about, just that they’re talking?

It’s the sound of their voice – the way they form their words. It’s the authority with which they tell their own story. It’s the way they guide you through their adventure, with details so charming you would swear you were there with them.

It’s one of those dates you wish would never end, where the restaurant closes down around you and you don’t care. Time has flown and you have to get up early tomorrow and you don’t care because the person beyond the breadsticks is simply the most fascinating person in the world.

When the date is done and you’re by yourself, you think about that person, replaying the things they said in your head.

It’s because that person has something about them, a special thing.

I’ve been on plenty of dates where the beyond the breadsticks person was drop-dead gorgeous, but they didn’t have the thing. Interesting, sure. Fun to look at, oh yeah. Compelling? Nope.

My oldest dog is not a well fellow. At almost 17, he wants to cuddle, and my spidey-sense tells me those opportunities are fading.

Sitting next to him on the loveseat in our three-book library, a copy of my third book, Adventures of a Sawdust Man, came to hand.

I just flipped it open (it was a copy I’d printed for my wife to read) and began to read.

The writing was good, concise. Dialog was funny in the right places and flowed smoothly. Words were well chosen.

Compelling?

Not in the least.

The novel on the other side of the breadsticks was pretty to look at, but so uninteresting. It was genuinely…oh, don’t say it! Don’t say it! Oh, here it comes…

Dull.

Now I understand why agents line up to take a pass on it.

I, of course, think it’s really good. But those are complements from the parents. No, you don’t look fat! Of course not. You’re not dull as a brick. Not my kid.

It’s the command of the circumstances, the sincerity in the words, the flat-out honesty in the feelings that bubble out of the characters that compels you to keep reading. I think.

My guys seem like cardboard cutouts.

The plan from here is to read a bestseller to identify that Thing. To go on a date with a really good book and see if I can pin down what makes it so compelling.

And then apply that to my novel.

From disaster comes opportunity.

The movie ain’t over until the credits roll…

Okabus Dokus

It’s a little known fact that the old Latin term for “okey-dokey” was okabus dokus. Look it up. What did the serving girl say to Julius Caesar when he asked her to get more grapes? I’m telling you, it’s a thing.

Or, maybe not.

I met with some old friends today that I haven’t seen in, like, 35 years. They’re not old, you know, relatively. But I hadn’t seen them for a long, long time.

We were discussing this and that and here and there, and I suddenly got this brain wave. Call me simple – go ahead, everybody else does – but how about this for a metaphor:

When you first start out on your own in the world, you don’t know anything. Here you are, twenty-something, and it’s all so bewildering. You don’t know where you’re going, or what you’re going to do.

One day follows another, and you get along. Careers, lovers, kids, they all come and go. All the while you’re putting one foot in front of the other, doing the best you can.

And then, one day, after a bunch of years, you pause to look back. And not like glancing in the rearview mirror at a red light, but a real look. You examine all the stuff that has happened on your road.

And it’s amazing. You started out at the edge of a dark forest, only seeing that little space just ahead of you.

But now there are towns and people and nations and oceans – all the stuff that you discovered and uncovered on your journey.

And there are the things that you did – stuff you created, accomplishments, awards, accolades, failures, disasters. All right there for you to see.

And loved ones, here in that town, there in that village. Kids, dogs, cats. They’re all there.

And right through the middle of all that is a beautifully paved road. Wasn’t there when you started, but it’s there now, because you paved it.

You linked all those towns and mountains and people and jobs and accomplishments together. You.

No matter where you are in life, at the beginning, the end, or somewhere in between, that beautiful road stretches out behind you, tying all the events of your life into one, continuous expanse of once-unknown but now treasured landscape.

The road ahead? Still an unknown. It’s like those video games where you clear the forest just enough to see what’s coming, but not where the road goes.

Which is cool, right? You can’t change the road ahead – no matter which way you take yourself, the road paves right underneath you.

So, what can you do?

Take a page from Julius Caesar. Put your thumb up in the air, smile, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Okubus dokus.

I can’t Afford to Drown

Once upon a time, in what could only have been a former life, I drowned. I don’t think it was this life, because, well…

My wife and I went sailing with my college-graduate daughter today. She teaches at a city-run sailing and kayaking camp and has weekend access to the sailboats they use during the week.

If you know anything about me, you know that I have a great love for the exploits of Horatio Hornblower, Captain Aubrey, and my secret man-crush, Captain Bolitho.

C.S. Forester based his fictional Hornblower on the exploits of Thomas Cochrane and Horatio Nelson. O’Brien uses those same logs, plus others he’s researched, for Captain “Goldilocks” Aubrey. And Alexander Kent, the pen name of the well-established author Douglas Reeman, carried a lot of those same stories forward for Captain Richard Bolitho.

All of these fellows sailed for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, chasing and capturing and sinking French and Spanish ships whenever the plot line needed it.

It’s hard to imagine that strangely elite brutality – packing 700 sailors into a ship of the line, sailing the seas to find a similarly-sized enemy, and then to fire iron balls at it until either he or you could fight no more. Victory is ours! Or theirs…

But, it calls to me. And I’ve written a book called Marigold’s End that predates Napoleon, but features that same kind of brutal combat. I love that book.

If you read it, you will love it, too. Or you might merely like it. Or perhaps even dislike it. Hate it. Loathe it. This isn’t going well.

Anyway, today we took a tiny 14-foot sailboat out into the frothing waves beyond the breakwater. Green waves that blotted out the horizon, lifted us way up so that we could see far down the coast, and then dropped us back into the deep trench again.

My daughter told us that last week one of her 9-year-old campers wasn’t dealing with the rise and fall very well. He leaned over the side for a moment, and then sat back up, much relieved.

“There goes my sausage!” he cheerfully announced.

We felt that the wind had gotten up a bit, so we circled around the 1-mile buoy, and then headed back to port.

I must tell you, I was absolutely panicked. I did my best to hide it, but, in a 14-footer, you are right on the water – like, it’s right there. And those waves were green and huge and omnipresent, and I could feel myself drowning right out there. That boat was surely going to tip over, and I would drown.

She turned the boat so that the waves came under our counter, pushing us back into the safety of the breakwater.

But I was in the water, holding onto a rope slung around the quarter of a large sailing ship, plunging under the wave each time a roller happened by. I can see it this moment. I can feel the cold and the panic and the sense of futility. This moment.

The image stayed with me all the way back to the dock, and rides with me here.

I dusted off my old model of the Black Falcon – oh, no need to be nice. It’s a dreadful model, I know – trying to see if I could shake this drowning feeling. No luck.

Now I know I have to write about it seriously. Deal with the story that’s literally dying to be told. I think I actually drowned while hanging onto that rope.

I’m pretty sure the image pops up in Marigold’s End. Now I have to reread it.

I want to rewrite it, but all rewrite projects are on hold for the next few weeks while I concentrate on selling Sawdust Man.

You see, it occurred to me, and this applies to you, that no one will sell your book for you. You have no representative, no agency, other than yourself.

If you don’t represent your book, it will remain unread. If you don’t sell it, it will never sell, and your story will remain untold.

So, I am actively beating the bushes until I find an agent to represent my current offering, Adventures of a Sawdust Man.

Once that is sold, well, maybe then I can afford to drown.

Kate Capshaw in the 80s

So it’s 4:11 AM on Friday and I can’t sleep because of this cold and I’ve just finished drinking my tea with a little honey and a little lemon and a big dose of bourbon because I sound like Orson Welles after smoking a carton of Marlboros, and suddenly the floor falls away.

Although I’m sitting in the dark fog on the back patio, having just finished an email to my boss advising him that I’m calling in sick today, somehow I’m now at my desk at work.

And the floor falls away.

I zoom past the guys in Service Management on the first floor who look at me like, what are you doing here?

And then it’s down a black tunnel with the occasional lantern lights and the showers of the sparks from the wheels of the mine cart…

OMG I’m in the mine cart part of the that dreadful second Indiana Jones movie with the zombies and the trearing out of still-beating hearts!

Except there’s no kid screaming “Indy! Indy” who will someday grow up to be a fine actor and win an Academy Award for his excellent work in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Big Shorty, that was the character.

And there’s no Kate Capeshaw from the 80s wearing a diaphonous top screaming my name… rats…

Equally, there’s no guy in another mine cart roaring through the dark, looking like a cross between Lurch and the Last Airbender and shooting lightning beams or whatever the hell was going on in that movie.

Nope, it’s just me, in the metal cart, barreling down, down into the darkness.

Are you sure about that no Kate Capshaw in the 80’s part?

As the cart bashes along the rickety track through tunnels filled with spiders and stuff, you gotta think that ol’ Indy Jones had to be questioning his career choices. I mean, this track can’t end up in a sunny little valley with a retirement home and a cuppa tea, can it? Kate Capshaw from the 80s smiling saying g “yaay, you made it?”

How old was Inidana Jones, anyway? If he was 35 in, like, 1935, how come he was so old in the last movie? He should only have been, like, 70…

Down and down I’m roaring, all by myself in my little black mine cart. Surely this track dead-ends. Or maybe it leads to a cave stuck in a mountainside, like it did in that dreadful movie.

Maybe I’ll have to hang on to some jungle vines with Kate Capshaw from the 80s clinging desperately to me. That wouldn’t be so bad.

I feel like something huge is happening in my life. A life- changing something. And, while I can’t do anything to stop it, maybe I don’t want to stop it, because it’ll all be okay in the end.

Or maybe it’s just the bourbon.

Secret Query Intel

You gotta keep this on the down-low, the ixnay to anybody, you didn’t hear this from me.

But.

My wife heard from the lovely sister-in-law (she read Adventures of a Sawdust Man a loooong time ago, in case you haven’t kept up with The Saga of Me), who has been inspired to begin her own writing project.

Hello? I call that a win in anyone’s book. Not that I inspired her, but that she’s inspired!

Anyway, she confessed to my darling wife that she never sent her notes, for which I waited so many long, desperate weeks, because she didn’t have any! She felt it was ready to publish.

Funnily enough, you can find it published here.

So, Fred Flintstone and I have been having this confab, you see. My Wilma told me she still sees a million clams in the cards. Now comes this notice of non-notiness from the lovely sister.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky?

So, back to how to write a successful query letter.

Step One: Select an agent in your genre.

Step Two: Find an author in your genre that writes somewhat similar so that the potential agent can see your book on the shelf.

Aha, says I. So I have to nail it down that way, does I?

Well, I guess my book is a fantasy, becuase it uses a lot of magic, and it’s historical because it uses a lot of Shakespeare, and it’s Young Adult because one of the protagonists is 17.

So, here’s something to do on a foggy afternoon: do a Google search on the best fantasy novels of 2023.

OMG I’ve never so many lost kingdoms, overrun kingdoms, hidden, secret, forgotten, blah blah blah… not to denigrate the many authors, but it’s all so, so dark.

Finally, after much searching, I found my guy. Liked him right from the git-go. Can’t tell you his name or I’ll screw the pooch.

But, when you find your author, you find their publisher. Dig just a little deeper, and you can find their literary agency.

Yeah, I said it. Literary. Agency.

Boom. Pay dirt. Scroll through the list of agents, pick out that certain someone, pray to the gods of all things printed that they’re open to queries, and go pick up your million clams!

Nobody tells you this, or maybe they do and I’m too stubborn to read it, but, hey, there it is.

Enjoy your million clams!