Minneapolis, MN -- August 5, 2007

Reading Rain Storm, by Barry Eisler.

Some of his favorite authors are Clive Cussler, James Rollins and Stephen Koontz. He likes adventures.

His favorite book of all time? His answer--Oh? But then he was sure about it. Flight of the Intruder, by Stephen Koontz. It was just a great book, the author's first book. It has tremendous writing style. When you're reading it your eyes just slice down the page like butter. The story is a story of depressing reality. They're on an aircraft carrier making missions into Vietnam and people are dying. You fall in love with the characters and they die and that's what war is like--57,000 Americans died in Vietnam.

He has always wanted to write. It's a lot of work, he said. You don't make much. Huge competition. Publishers are a cutthroat bunch.

He told me all of this and I told him why I am doing this blog--I want to write. Ha!

He got a book by John Rollins once while dumpster diving. It had no cover and it was a sea story like a Cussler book and about a third of the way through reading it he realized it was the best of the genre.

When he doesn't dumpster dive them, he gets his books at Target. The one he's reading now, though, he got for a dollar at Barnes and Nobles.

Why doesn't he get his books from the library? He's lost his card. And, he said, the funny thing is, because of the way his brain has been working lately, he's able to read a book four or five times and still find it surprising.

His own book? He laughed. Even if you write something good, he said, nobody'll know it while you're still alive.

He started writing a book. Played with it. He had a degree, with journalism courses, but wanted to write a book instead of practice journalism. It was a sci-fi fantasy book but he found out that it takes a long time to develop a style that's publishable and at the time he was married and had a family and responsibilities and didn't feel like he could avoid those responsibilities to write.

Now, he would rather play video games. And, he did for a while play a lot of video games until he started reading again.

Back then, he was a sixties kid and didn't want to be a journalist, writing someone else's editorial viewpoint. He wanted to write a book instead. When he was younger, he valued his ideals a lot more. Now, he doesn't think he has anything unique to say.


Slicing through butter.