When I was in high school, I hung out with Jim. People thought we were brothers, since we were both haole (white), about the same height, wore similar glasses, and could usually be found together.

One of our friends took to calling us Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. That quickly got changed to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Don.

As nicknames go, I’ve had worse.

Fast forward twenty-something years, where you find me venturing into the world of Twitter and in need of a screen name. The first thing that comes to mind is: tweeterdon.

And then that name gets rejected. Cute, but too much of an inside joke. You get it now, but it requires too much backstory.

So I’ve opted instead for the more descriptive – if pedestrian – writerdc.

Now that I’m on, I intend to re-read Jaime’s series of Twitter posts over at Bookmom Musings. so I can figure out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

Tweet, tweet.

Yesterday morning, while getting breakfast ready, I had a character start talking to me. This is a character so minor as to almost not exist in the book – her name appears twice, and she doesn’t have a single line of dialog.

She wasn’t happy about that. She thought she should have played a bigger role, being the roommate to the main love interest and all. I explained that it wasn’t her story, and she’s lucky I even bothered to give her a name.

She insisted that if there’s a sequel, she wants a bigger part. She then told me a whole bunch of information about herself, like she’s a Social Work major and has a photo on her desk of her posing with Harry Reid.

Not quite sure what to do with that.

So later, I mentioned this little conversation to my wife. She rolled her eyes.” And I thought I had problems,” she said.

Thank goodness for online writer friends, who understand my kind of crazy.

After a week or so back in Hawaii, I still had my “missionary tan”: decent color on my arms, face, and halfway up my neck. The rest of me was pasty white. So when I took my sisters to Hanauma Bay for a day of sunbathing and snorkeling, I knew that I needed some heavy-duty sunscreen. I picked up the strongest stuff Pay-n-Save carried, and slathered it all over myself once we got to the beach.

After a wonderfully relaxing day lounging on the sand, we packed up the car and began the drive back to La’ie so I could get cleaned up in time for my job at the PCC. As we drove, I developed an itch on my right knee. This wasn’t too surprising after a day at the beach, but the closer we got to La’ie, the stronger the itch became.

As we pulled into the driveway at home, my leg itched all over, and had turned a light pink color. By the time I finished my shower, it was painfully obvious what had happened – I somehow managed to miss one entire leg when applying my sunscreen.

That evening at work, and for several days after, I’m sure I looked quite the sight marching around with a tuba and wearing a knee-length lava lava, one leg pasty-white, and the other as red as a beet.

Yes, I was one of those kids – when Christmastime came around, I couldn’t leave the hidden presents alone. It was like a treasure hunt, trying to find the secret hiding place of the gifts, and learning what was coming my way.

I never found them all, of course, so there were always surprises Christmas morning. And unlike some people I share genes with (Hi, Jen!), there were boundaries I never crossed. Once a present was wrapped, for example, it was out of the chase.

But oh, how I loved seeking out the unwrapped treasures.

How about you? Did you resist the urge, or were you a peeker, too?

Whichever way, I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas!

Today was a perfect day to write. Cold and dark, with a gentle, foggy mist coating the outside world. The weather practically demanded that I stay inside, sit at my desk, and give voice to the stories in my head.

Too bad the septic pump had other ideas.

I probably shouldn’t place too much blame on the pump – it’s that whole “not speaking ill of the dead” thing. Besides, blame doesn’t do any good when the toilets are backing up and waste water is flooding through the house.

Fortunately, our toilets did not back up, nor did the house flood. But without a working pump, we were just one shower, one batch of dishes, one load of laundry away from total disaster. Or maybe two or three loads, but not much more than that.

In the past, I’ve called the septic company and they have taken care of our system. But the septic guys are expensive. And new pumps are expensive. Add those two expensive things together, and our accountant would shoot me.

No, not really. Our accountant isn’t allowed firearms. But he is good with a screwdriver, so I sent him out to fix the septic system. Sadly, since I do the books around here, that meant I was going to get dirty.

And cold. Did I mention the cold? Wet, biting, chill-you-to-the-bone cold – not the best weather for mucking around in a septic system. If there is such a thing as good weather for mucking around in a septic system.

Now, before you get all totally grossed out, you should probably know that the septic system we have is one that separates the water, purifies it, and then sprays it out over the rocks in the back yard, allowing the prairie grass to grow and thrive until I make the accountant go out and mow it. And the pump that died is the one that handles the clean water. Things could have been much worse.

So anyway, rather than wearing my writer’s hat this morning, I got to wear my handyman hat. And I got to do all of the great things that handimen do, like fitting pipes, and running wires, and taking apart a pump. I also got to dig in the dirt, and drive a pickup truck to the hardware store, where I spent money. Lots of money. Tons and tons of money.

The kid’s Christmas money.

“Merry Christmas, girls. Santa brought you a septic pump.

“You may now flush the toilet.”

Good thing Santa already did some his shopping. With a little luck, it will be enough.

They say you never forget your first time. After what I experienced today, I have to say I believe them.

When I went out to get Alyssa off of the bus this afternoon, I discovered a box on the front porch – a box full of books. I cut open the tape, dug through the packing paper, and lifted out a copy. A small tingle of excitement shot through me as I held the book in my hand.

Then I turned it over and saw my name. In print. On the cover.

And then I saw my name again in the copyright notice, and in the table of contents, and on my story itself, and on my little author bio. My mouth spread into a grin that I could not have removed, even if I had wanted to. Which I didn’t.

I can only imagine how much stronger the excitement, how much broader the grin, how much bigger the thrill when the book is my novel. Oh, happy day!

Yeah, I think I’ve been bitten.

I was a ninth grader in Mr. Camit’s Geometry class, but couldn’t keep my thoughts focused on angles and circumferences. Instead, my mind drifted to the Oahu Interscholastic Association Band Festival scheduled for the next night.

OIA was always the last – and most fun – performance of the marching band season. As it was not a competition, the pressure was off, and the directors added in fun little bits to the show – like the year we ran off the field in slow motion while Chariots of Fire played on the overhead speakers.

The best part of the festival was that it took place on Thanksgiving Eve, and was immediately followed by a four day weekend. But late on that Tuesday morning, a runner from the office brought a note to Mr. Camit’s class, foreshadowing significant changes to all of our plans for the coming week. School was being dismissed at lunchtime, on account of the hurricane.

I hadn’t heard anything about a hurricane before the note’s arrival. Deep blue skies and white puffy clouds overhead belied the storm barreling our way from the southwest, and it seemed oddly surreal to be making preparations with such beautiful weather around us. But throughout the evening, clouds thickened and the gentle trade winds grew stronger, and by the next day wind and rain lashed at our house, broke our trees, and sent several islands into darkness.

Although the eye of Hurricane Iwa passed far to the west, saving the bulk of its destruction for Kauai and Ni’ihau, our yard and the yards of our neighbors were strewn with downed tree limbs, palm fronds, and coconuts of all sizes.

School was canceled, as was the band festival, and instead we set about cleaning up. Our street was made up of BYU-Hawaii faculty, all living in school owned housing, and everyone pitched in to help each other. My dad had a chain saw, and quickly set to work.

The first thing he did was take down the one tree that hadn’t suffered any damage, but had an annoying habit of dumping large inedible nuts all over our yard. The school’s physical plant had refused to allow its removal before, but now the poor tree was just an indirect casualty of the storm.

Machetes and hatchets attacked whatever didn’t require the chainsaw, and it wasn’t long before all of the debris was stacked in neat piles, awaiting removal.

That Thanksgiving proved to be one of the most interesting I’ve ever experienced. Power was still out on our side of the island (and would be for the next two weeks). Most of the homes had electric stoves, but we, along with one other neighbor, had a gas range. Everything from the neighborhood that needed baking made its way through those two ovens, while dining chairs were moved outside under the clear Hawaiian sky.

It was a neighborhood feast, eaten picnic-style, with everyone thankful that (at least in our neighborhood) the damage wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Sure, we had to store our frozen food in a refrigerated National Guard truck and learn how to take a shower out of a gallon jug, but everyone was safe, and we had a chance to pull together and really get to know our neighbors.

Plus, it’s hard to argue with an extra long break from school, even if it meant a truncated band season.

Many years ago, before the Megabit Fairies delivered the news straight to your desktop, I had a paper route. Actually, it was my sisters’ route, but given the sheer mass of the Sunday edition, coupled with the oh-dark-thirty delivery time, I was pressed into regular service once a week.

We loaded up the heavy canvas bags that hung down our fronts and backs, mounted our bikes and pedaled along a route that went from our home on Puuahi St. to the older part of town, up Moana St., across Lanihuli St., and down Naniloa Loop. The last deliveries were to houses along Naupaka St, up on La’ie Point.

La’ie Point is a large finger of rock that juts out into the Pacific Ocean, pointing almost due east. Ancient legend holds that The Point is the body of Laniloa, a monstrous lizard, or mo’o, slain by the hero, Kana. The five nearby islands are bits of Laniloa’s severed head. Note the eye socket in this one:

Most Sunday mornings, the relief of delivering the last heavy paper up on The Point mingled with an explosion of gold, pink and blue in some of the most amazing sunrises I’ve ever seen.

With those wonderful displays of nature in mind, I set both the first and last scene of my book in the early morning hours up on La’ie Point, with brilliant sunrises captivating the attention of my characters.

Then I went to a writers conference, and learned that one of the most basic rules of exciting first chapters is: “Don’t start with the hero contemplating a sunset.” Thank goodness I wrote a sunrise, I thought. But it soon became clear that my opening chapter on The Point would have to be cut, along with 100 other pages of needless background story.

I really liked that first chapter (you can read it here if you would like) and cutting it was a hard thing to do. However, letting it go made the story much, much better.

Fortunately, the other sunrise scene – the one at the very end of the book – is still alive and well. While a sunrise can be boring at the start of a book, I think it makes for the perfect ending.

Computers and I go way back. Not quite to the punch card era – but close.

Back in the mid-70s, not very many kids got to play on computers. I was lucky in that my dad taught high school math, and since computers used numbers, they were given to the math teachers to teach.

Here my sisters and I are playing super-fun text-based games, like Star Trek and Oregon Trail. All of these terminals are connected to a single computer the size of a large closet and nowhere near as powerful as a basic cell phone.

Each high school in the school district had a terminal or two as well, and they all connected to and shared this one single computer.

The 80’s brought about the Personal Computer revolution.

Apparently the Computer Desk revolution was still on its way. Geeky glasses were absolutely required for computing during this time period.

The very first computer I could truly call my own was a BYU-Hawaii surplus Fat Mac, with no hard drive and a grand total of 512k of memory. To put that into perspective, the smallest iPod currently available has 2,048 times that much. But it was great for writing papers.

For serious computer work, I went to the BYU-Hawaii computer lab, where I could use a Mac SE, with it’s beefy 4 Mb of RAM. And just check out that printer! You haven’t lived until you’ve baby-sat a 35-page term paper printing one line at a time, made sure the paper doesn’t jam, and then separated the pages and ripped off the track-feed edges.

I enjoyed computers so much, I decided to make a career out of them. This is me during my Tech Support days at Apple Computer. I won’t bore you with the details on those machines, but at least they gave me two. It would have been a great job if not for all the people calling my phone.

Years ago, knowing about and working with computers was a cool, rare thing. Nowadays, everyone and their dog has a computer. Or two. There are a total of 10 computers in our house alone, and four of them are used on a daily basis.

The novelty is gone. Perhaps that’s just as well.

As I look back on the tremendous growth of computing in the last few decades, both in terms of power and popularity, I can only imagine what the future will hold for us. I, for one, am excited to see it.

As Halloween approaches, my mind goes back to the many Trick-or-Treats I’ve seen over the years. There’s always been a certain magic to the holiday – walking from house to house after dark; the smell of pumpkin, flame roasting from the inside; the aroma of a hundred-thousand empty calories mingling in a large plastic bag.

I’m not really a big fan of getting scared, though. I’m willing to go to haunted houses and horror movies, but I’ve never really considered them to be fun. And now that I’m an adult, the candy tends to give me second chins and turn my kids into creatures from the above-mentioned haunted houses.

I guess maybe I don’t enjoy Halloween as much as I used to.

But one part about Halloween I’ve always liked is getting dressed up in costumes.

Back in high school, I talked my buddies into dressing up with me as the Three Musketeers.

(This costume worked much better than the ill-fated Raggedy-Ann and Andy, which I tried later with a different friend, and which I will not discuss any further.)

In college, Halloween rolls around about the same time as midterms, and I always felt like a zombie. The feeling provided powerful costume inspiration.

Notice the three different instruments, used in three different bands, with concerts all on the same night. Yeah, never made that mistake again.

Here my wife and I dress up as Bajorans during our Star Trek watching days.

This is me in my Kenny G costume.

Of course, Kenny G doesn’t have a mustache, so I had to shave to make this costume work. As I came out of the bathroom, my then four-year-old daughter – who had never in her life seen me without facial hair – began crying inconsolably.

“You don’t look like my daddy any more!”

But once I put on the wig and showed her pictures of the real Kenny G, she finally admitted that, since he didn’t have a mustache then I shouldn’t have one, either.

But she made me promise to grow it back the next day.