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When I came back from Vietnam I had one goal- to get as fucked up as I could and to sustain it for as long as humanly possible. Like I had done throughout my life, I kept everything locked deep inside. I had just killed over 50 people and that's not what bothered me... what bothered me is that it should have bothered me but didn't. I've never really felt like I was a part of the human race, or really belonged here.

Anyone that read my life story on here knows that from when I was 5 until I was rescued by my uncle at 10 I was handed around a bunch of pedophiles that molested me over and over. The only salvation I had was a set of encyclopedia that my father (who I met 3-4 times) had given me. I had those encyclopedia and whatever books I was able to gloam. They were my escape and they were the only thing that kept me in this world... I'm convinced of that now. I could open a book and go anywhere and be anything. I could be in my castle in the Bavarian Alps- King of all I surveyed. I could be in the jungles of Africa, or at the Grand Canyon. I taught myself to read and have read everything I could get my hands on since. One funny side note: Many of the words that I thought I knew, I heard years later and man, was I off- but I knew enough to be able to escape and that's what I've done all of my life, escape... escape and survive.

My escape from Vietnam, which took the form of drugs and alcohol, almost killed me. I got malaria in Nam and it's a disease that you never get rid of. As long as I stay fairly healthy, it remains in remission. Toward the end of my drinking, I kept getting sick and if I hadn't gotten sober, I wouldn't have lasted another year. What does any of this have to do with writing you ask? It was only after I began to talk to others with similar experiences (Vietnam) that I was able to exorcise those demons. Writing allows me to exorcise the demons of my past.

In the last episode of The Night Gods I wrote a scene in which a girl is raped and murdered. I drew from a similar experience that had happened to me. Obviously I'm not a girl and when my head struck the table I didn't die, but the rest is real. Writing fiction allows me to weave my experiences into stories... things that are happening to people that only exist in my mind. When I write I live every life and every experience of the characters I'm writing. If I don't believe the story, how can I expect you to believe it? It's difficult to live or relive these experiences... in fact it's exhausting, but it also has it's rewards. While I was writing the rape scene, I threw up, but now that demon is gone- forever. One down, a million or so to go!

So if you want to write, read. Read everything, but make sure to read something with some quality... authors like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Salinger... don't just read junk. Forget about style, it will come on its own. I know I'm not a good writer... yet- but I am getting better. The more you write, the better you get. So, read... read and live and write about it. I hope this has been at least a little helpful.

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