Category Archives: The Never Prayer

Aaron Explodes Onto the World’s Stage – BOOM!

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On Tuesday, I had my very first speaking engagement as a published, well, pre-published author. Yeah, I spoke at Pikes Peak last year, but I didn’t really have a product. I was a writer. But this past Tuesday, I went as an author. Big whoop. The more I live, the more I see, most of life is very very, very undramatic, and very, very plain. Even if you are Paris frakkin’ Hilton, you still wake up, pee, eat, feel the wind on your face, simple, plain, unromantic. The trick is to enjoy the unromantic and relish the plain. The irony is, God made it all very fair. We all have the same challenge, to enjoy the plain.

So, my debut was plain, unromantic, and I am victorious. I loved every second of it. Even the awkward and uncomfortable seconds. But I think next time, I’m going Michael Scott it up. Bring in a boombox, pick an old song (I got the power!), and do some sort of stupid intro and babble a lot more. Make it shiny and sparkly and dramatic as hell.

But first, thanks to Terry Kroenung for giving me the chance. And I didn’t curse. I didn’t talk too much about God, and it went well in his classroom. Yeah, I had about three people listening to me, and I had to fight for stage time with the local toughs. Niwot toughs, yo. Ghetto. But the bad kid said I didn’t suck. So I have that going for me. I tried to get a big, huge, philosophical conversation going, but it didn’t quite work. I think I’m rusty, being back in the classroom. Back in the day, well, they’d still be blowin’ the debris off their quaking minds.

What really saved the day were the five girls who were in the Creative Writing club. They were so full of zip and wit and fire. One had self-published a book already, Infected. Another jammed out 51,000 words for NaNoWriMo. And they loved my opening sentence, but then, yeah, duh, because my opening page rocks.

In the end, what really struck me, is that I’m not so completely old and out of touch. I somtimes feel that the kids are of another generation, and I am an alien visitor writing stories for a people I don’t know. But people are people and kids are kids and teens are teens and it’s all about the same. Completely different, but inside, at the soul level, the same. Hard. Dramatic. Full of longing and wonder and despair and love and lust and hate. And that’s why I write Young Adult novels. Because in my novels, things are never simple, plain or unromantic. And next time, I’m gonna bring watermelon and props and drugs, lots of drugs. Kidding. No drugs. Just pop, pop music.

Okay maybe a few drugs. A little V. For Valkyr. Max Payne reference. Nevermind. Out of touch. That’s me.

Textbook Golden Moments in Houston, TX

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I’m a guy who likes a perfect moment. As I’ve said before, my whole sit-com condition makes this more difficult than it probably should be. If I’m alive and not on fire, that is a perfect moment, or it should be. But I have a sit-com condition. I want what my mind thinks is perfect. Which means very specific details.

I get a perfect moment every once in awhile. When I was eighteen, the summer before I went to college, I kissed a girl that I had dreamed of for years. A perfect moment. A dream grasped, finally. When I was pining for my high school years, I used to call them textbook golden moments, and they were. I’ll list a bunch, really quick like.

Talking with Ryan in his gold camaro outside of my house even though it was past curfew. Hanging out in our group. Walking to the river with Owen through the pine trees under the Rocky Mountains. Darlene teaching me how to smoke outside of Fuddruckers in her gray car with the bench front seat pulled up as far as it would go so my knees were under my chin. Things like that.

But it wasn’t just high school stuff. I remember being in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, climbing up a grassy mountainside with our Sherpa and our porters crawling up the trail, and it was perfect. I was on an expedition in Nepal and it was hard and dramatic and perfect. And my wife and I spent a month housesitting at a mansion in the Rose Garden area of San Jose, California when we were first going out. Our own “Enchanted April”. There was one night, well, I’ll keep that to myself.

I got the edits back from my editor at Crescent Moon Press. I was working on them in the Houston airport during a layover and guess what? It was perfect. It was wonderful. It made every breath sweet.

Ideally, as I’ve said, every moment we’re not being tortured should be a perfect moment. But I live thinking I’ll never die and nothing will ever change, and so the seconds come cheaply, and I use them cheaply. Such is the tragedy of human life. This constant forgetting that life is precious.

But after twenty years of work, I’m drawing paychecks and getting paid off in perfect moments. It was worth it. Lord, was it worth it.

Coming Soon from Crescent Moon Press!

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That’s right, I did it! I’ve gotten a publisher!

The Never Prayer will be coming soon in E-book edition, as well as print edition, from Crescent Moon Press.

The Never Prayer is my story of good vs evil, angel vs devil, push vs pull. Young Lena is torn between making the wrong choices for the right reasons and risking everything she still holds dear, or making the right choices and failing her little brother.

As she continues down the dark path she feels has been chosen for her, she is given one last chance to redeem herself. All she has to do is pick the angel over the devil – if she can figure out which is which before it’s too late.

If you were faced with an angel and a demon, would you know the difference? If life threw you in the gutter, would you be able to climb out? What if everything and everyone depended on you? Could you find the light in time?

The Never Prayer asks you to take a deeper look at how we determine what is right, and what is just, and ultimately what it means to be good.

Book trailer, author appearances, and pre-ordering all coming soon, so stay tuned!!