Category Archives: All about me

Twelve Step Tuesday – Step 1 – Nasty Muses – Powerless and Unmanageable

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our lives had become unmanageable.

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The Twelve Step process is interesting because it doesn’t start with us being heroic and strong and invincible.
It doesn’t start, as Stuart Smalley would say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  Nope. It starts like a good story.  In a place of darkness and despair.

 

The first step is all about being reduced to ashes, being broken, defeated, wrecked, enslaved, sorry as one shoe battered on the side of the highway alone.

Maggie Stiefvater

​My Step 1 goes back to the very roots of wanting to be a writer and not being able to write.  Trust me, I wanted to write novels.  I mean, Maggie Stiefvater had 30 novels in various stages of revision by the time she graduated from high school.

I wanted to be like Maggie Stiefvater.  Doesn’t everyone?  But then, I was powerless and my life was unmanageable.  I couldn’t write even when I wanted to.

And I had the usual excuses.  I was afraid.  I was busy.  It seemed too hard.  I was full of self-doubt.  T.V. was easier.  Reading other people’s books was easier.  And really, that’s how we begin.  Writers start out as readers. Well, broken readers who can’t leave well enough alone.  Or at least, that’s my story.

When teens ask me how to be a writer and what they should do, I say: Write as much as you can.  Read as much as you can.  And sleep.  Teens need sleep.  Their brains are developing.

But for me, I was powerless over if I wrote or not and my writing life was unmanageable.  ​For example, when I was just out of college and working, I promised myself I would write on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7pm to 9pm.   I was busy, you see.  Yeah, that was before family, house, and children.  I wasn’t busy.  I was preoccupied with a whole lotta’ nothing.  As my friend says, I can waste an entire lifetime in ten-minute increments.

And yes, every so often, I’d get a Saturday and I’d skip watching the video tapes of The X-Files I’d recorded, and I would write, and it would be great, and I would think.  Man, that’s cool.  I should do that more often.  How about Mondays and Wednesdays for two hours at night?  But then the siren call of the TV and I would crash onto the couch and be stuck there.  An eater of the lotus was I.  The television lotus.

Now, I could blame my lack of self-discipline, or I could blame Star Trek, or Fear Factor, or John Hughes movies for taking up all my time.  I could blame my parents for not encouraging me like Christopher Paolini’s parents did. Yeah, the guy was homeschooled and had parental support.  I was educated by Jesuits.  Okay, we’re even there.

But my point is, I was powerless and my writing was unmanageable because of who I was and my inability to accept that I needed help and that I couldn’t do it myself.

Here was my idea of a writer: a writer is born fully grown from the head of his/her father. They stride out into the world with one sandal flapping the dust (very Jason of the Argonauts) and they sit down and write a novel.  The novel is gorgeous.  And yes, it might be a Herculean effort, but in the end, it is wonderful.  They then box up that novel (I grew up before email, and we had paper and typewriters and hippies and 80’s music and boys walked around with their hair in their eyes and girls wore lacy gloves like Madonna) and send that box o’ novel out to the publishing world where it is published to acclaim.

 

That was a writer.  They didn’t have critique groups.  They didn’t attend conferences. They worked alone in crappy, lice-infested apartments and drank hooch and smoked camel-cigarettes and were bad-asses.  Even the women writers.  And that’s true.  Ain’t nothin’ as bad-ass as a lady writer.

I thought I had to learn how to write, get published, and then do all that alone.  And it scared me silly.

It drove me not to write because I was alone and even though my wife supported me (hurray), I was still alone.

Some people can do this alone.  I can’t.  My hat’s off to those bad-ass writers who can churn out pages for years all by themselves.  They are warriors.

I am not.  I’m a scared little boy most days.

Next week, my bottom!

Heavenly Fridays – The Angels That Helped Me Get Published

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My book is one day old today. I have a newborn. And yes, the work, oh Lord, the work, but I get to sleep in one long six-hour chunk. My human newborn babies never let me sleep that long.

 

 

The Never Prayer has a page for acknowledgements, but of course I couldn’t get everyone in there. I got some, but not all.

So this post, on Heavenly Friday, is for the angels who helped me get a book published, and in this hard, old world, getting a book published, any book, is a miracle. And it takes angels to git ‘r done.

First off, since I love angels who are atheists, I have to thank my publicist, Bree Ervin. She had faith in the book, and she had faith in me, and all along, I thought she was my Plan B for publicity. Nope, she is Plan A. Ain’t got no other plan but her.

I thanked Chris Devlin in the acknowledgements, but I gotta thank her again. Chris pulled double-duty, first as my inspiration to query, then as my loyal, dogged, Girl Friday who helped me with the day-to-day madness of trying to birth a book. She is part angel, part mid-wife, all woman. Yes, she gets dual thanks because she did twice the work.

My daughters, Asha and Ella. They were angels of death. But in a good way. They made me die to my old self. They took away all my time so I had to prioritize. I couldn’t lay around watching bad movies (Curly Sue) any more. Fatherhood carved away all of the distractions and focused me, tempered me like steel. Angels are messengers from God and my daughters brought the message of who I really am.

Becky Hodgkins. I had not queried a single agent and I had been writing for ten years, and I told Becky I was going to give up. And she said words that were sent by God. Hard words. Another angel of death. “Aaron, don’t quit without trying.” ‘Trying’ in the writing business means writing and marketing and seeking publication for a lifetime. Becky laid down a life sentence. But the words of God are not supposed to be easy. They are supposed to be true. And her words rang with Divine truth.

The next angels that helped me, well, these angels meet in bars on Tuesday nights and are more devils than angels, really. And yet, they have guided me, those devils. Jeanne C. Stein, Mario Acevedo, Warren Hammond, Tamra Monahan, Terry Wright, Tom and Margie Lawson – thanks for the devilish advice delivered on the breath of angels.

Lastly, the archangel in my life, my wife Laura. Again, I was going to give up, and she said more words ordained by God. She told me I lived most of my life in fantasy. And that writing, getting published, was a very real thing, the most real thing I could do. Yes, it would be scary. Yes, it would be hard. But it would be real.

Ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, baby. Thanks Laura. And thank you to all of my angels out there.

Today, I Do The Impossible. I Launch My Book. I Interview Myself. We are Mighty.

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Guess what? My book is out today. I have an ISBN that I am going to tattoo onto my flesh.

First off, if you are in Colorado, and if you aren’t incarcerated, come and join me for my book launch tonight at Hanson’s Bar and Grill in Denver.  The Facebook event is here!

But yes, my dreams of youth have come true in a very real, very worldly, very dirty way.

That’s the world, real, dirty—imperfect. Since March 29, 2012 rates up there with all the important dates in my life, I decided to do the impossible. Any book that gets published is an impossibility, even those self-published. It’s all impossible. So, I am going to interview myself. Yeah, you got it. It’s very Billy Idolish. Let me sink another drink…

 

Ah, this Aaron Ritchey, this guy. You want his bio? Click ‘round on this here website. You want a synopsis of The Never Prayer? Same thing. Click around. My short pitch is that my novel is about love, angels, demons, drug addicts, and atheists. And it really is.

So, let’s get to the weirdness? Your Honor, permission to treat the witness as hostile.

Permission granted.

 

AMR1: So, Aaron, your first book published? Is this the first book you ever wrote?

 

 

 

 

AMR2: That’s a bad question. I’ll answer it, but I ain’t happy. Nope. My first book, way back when, I began when I was listening to the song, Mailman by Soundgarden in 1994. I had always wanted to be a writer, from day one. It was my secret dream. And I had stories and characters floating around in me my whole life. That first novel, The Dream of the Archer, it was big, beefy, postmodern, Shakespearean, David Lynchian! It was epic! And wordy. And I tried to pack too much into the book and it bloated up like a novel dunked in the bathtub. It took me years of critique groups, study, book-readin’, for me to write a novel tight enough and good enough to make it through the gauntlet of getting published. Like that old Clint Eastwood movie. Sondra Locke. Ugh.

AMR1: Let’s keep on track. No wandering off. Okay? So what kept you from sending out query letters for the books you wrote?

AMR2: Terror, mostly. And I was locked in my basement, in chains, by a madman, for years on end. The madman, being, of course, me. I didn’t know where to start with the pitching and query letters and synopsiseseses. I was lost and forsaken. It was only until I became desperate that I asked for help. And I’ll wander. Damn you.

AMR1: What made The Never Prayer different? Why query this novel and not just shove it away into a drawer like all the others–12, is that right?

AMR2: Well, I wrote a 500,000-word trilogy that I count as one book. But yeah, 12 books, in various stages of revision. One I almost got an agent with, but it was too dark and ironically suicidal. People have a hard time with suicide, and with ironic suicide, my main character came off whiny to a lot of people. I queried 10 agents with The Suicide King, but it never made it. The Never Prayer was a perfect storm. I had gotten a handle on story, and so the narrative is so tight it squeaks. It’s a nice length, about 67,000 words. And it is very me. Angst-ridden, desperate for meaning, searching for the Divine, and the characters are the same way, and it just all worked well. I continued to believe in it even after other people critiqued it. And it’s nice to have a story that people are familiar with, angels and demons, yes, everyone knows about angels and demons, and love, and Twilight, and sparkly vampires. But what I did with the whole angels and demon thing, it’s unique to me. I hope it works.

AMR1: How is your book different from your standard good versus evil book? I mean, it’s all been done. There is nothing new. We are writing in post-postmodernism. The literature of exhaustion, gone to bed, 3 a.m., nothing stirring, no creature awake.

AMR2: Everyone wants to make the Divine clean and perfect and something we can understand. God, Satan, angels and demons, it’s not a crystal castle in the clouds shining down in wonder and perfection. It’s a mud puddle. My angels and demons are mruky creatures, hard to understand, driven, but flawed. If we could logically understand the Divine, it would be a horror. My book is not good against evil. It’s hope against despair. It’s wisdom versus hunger. It’s selflessness versus canoli. It is not a clean fight. It’s mud-puddle dirty.

AMR1: Who would you want to have coffee with? Your hero, your heroine, or your villain?

AMR2: You ask other authors better questions. How come I don’t get the bar question? Or the wedding planner question? Okay, okay, coffee. I can’t go into a lot of detail because I don’t want to give anything away. At the beginning of the book, it’s not exactly clear who is the villain and who is the hero.

My villain is bad news. When I was writing the book, I would get so upset with him because he is righteously horrible. He’s this wounded soul who hungers and will never be filled, who wants everyone to feel the chaos he has inside of him. Would I want to have coffee with a guy like that? He’d be messing with everyone in the Starbucks and we’d eventually get thrown out. My hero, on the other hand, is just as wounded, but angry, serious, driven by a relentless need to fix the world. In the Starbucks, he’d be counseling the barista on whether she should leave her boyfriend or not. Again, not good company.

Which leaves me with Lena. Who would be drinking venti triple-shot lattes, worried about her brother, grieving over her parents, fighting with her aunt. We could talk music, maybe, but her mind wouldn’t be in the conversation.

Great, I’ve written a novel where I wouldn’t want to have coffee with any of the major characters. The minor characters? I would love to chat with Santiago about his recovery, or Pockets about Battlestar Galactica (best show ever), or Gramma Scar about her five husbands, or Deirdre Dodson about her fashionista ways. The supporting cast is a whole lot happier and easier to get along with. I did that on purpose. I did try and lighten things up with the supporting characters because the book starts off really dark. But things get better as Lena finds her support group.

Johnny Beels would make an awesome wedding planner, however.

AMR1: Are you done? I kinda’ fell asleep. So what emotion do you want readers to leave The Never Prayer feeling?

AMR2: Jeeze, man. What the hell? You were nicer to your other guests. I feel so self-abused. Of course, I wanna leave ‘em all in tears, yo. I cried all the way through this book because Lena has it rough and she wants to get through, but it’s hard on her. But in the end, there is hope, always hope, to change ourselves and to change the world. So yeah, I’d like readers to leave heartbroken but hopeful. Lena makes it through to the other side of her grief. But she pays a price. Gosh, I love this book. I’m so glad this is my first book ever published. I feel so proud to have written it.

AMR1: How fortunate you are. Sad books sell tons. Yeah, uh huh, great. I wish you luck, bro. Okay, this is the big question, and I know you don’t want me to ask you this question, but here it is: if you could take a pill to erase all desire to write without any regrets, would you take it? It’s a one-shot deal, like the red/blue pill in The Matrix. You take it and you are no longer a writer. Would you take it?

AMR2: Thanks, the one question I didn’t want to answer, you ask me. That’s just great. The acceptable answer is no, not me. I love to write. I was born to write. “In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream…”

The truth? I’d be a better husband, a better father, a better everything if I didn’t have this need to write fiction. I could write other people’s biographies. Everyone is always wanting to me write their memoirs. If I didn’t have this fiction thing, I’d have the time. I could watch more baseball. I could work out more. If I had the pill, I would take it. I’d get countless hours back to do a million other things.

But there is no pill. If I could have quit writing, I would have. But, though it is a burden, the benefits are legion. I get to be with other writers. I get the joy of finishing a story and looking back and enjoying the moments of feeling the Divine guide my pen. Er, fingers on keyboard. My friend Chris Devlin felt sorry for me because I didn’t like the actual writing. So I decided to love it like nothing else. And magically, it has become wonderful. The actual writing. All the other stuff around it, the marketing, the selling, the publishing woes, that stuff is still hard. Query letters. Hard. But the writing? Good.

Ernest Hemingway said, “Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.” That has happened to me. I’m in this for the duration.

I will always write books. I will never stop. Ever. It’s too late for me. If you can quit writing, quit now. If you can’t, God help you. God help us all. But enjoy the ride. Henry Miller said it. The only reward for writing is writing.

So let the words flow. Peace out!