Douglas Robbins

Author

Red Lobster- The Bowel Buster

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We had remembered the biscuits being delicious. I am a bread lover and must first admit that. Though bread makes me doughy around the mid-section, not to mention I have a mild wheat/gluten intolerance. I hadn’t been to Red Lobster in twenty years never thinking the food was very good. Neither did she. But we both kept thinking about those warm flaky biscuits saturated in garlic, oil and seasoning. Those biscuits did sound good.

We took the half hour drive over having a twenty-dollar gift certificate to ease the burden.

The waitress had a very large behind and told us way too much information to keep track of, with her name and other names that I hadn’t asked for and didn’t need to know. We were only there for the biscuits and would order “cuisine” to justify the “dinner”.

Well, the biscuits came and they were fine: warm with oily garlic seasoning, but they were just okay. We looked at each other and kind of shrugged in defeat. We ordered water and an appetizer of lobster and artichoke dip that sounded delightful to the palate while our excited taste buds waited. We also ordered a dish consisting of shrimp scampi, butterfly shrimp, and seasoned fish.

The large restaurant was halfway packed and it was only five o’clock. We tried once before to fulfill the biscuit craving yet there was a forty-five minute wait. So this time we decided to outsmart the masses and go early.

The dip came and it was a gooey concoction of oil, grease, cheese, and more oil with some squishy texturous substance that resembled lobster and must have come out of a can, jar, or someone’s back seat. The shrimp scampi tasted as if they microwaved the shrimp then poured a vat of greasy oil stew upon the helpless shrimp with the tail still on. The butterfly shrimp was soaked in a milky white flavoring that resembled what could have been a jar of mayonnaise from Walmart that was then smeared upon the little fellows.

Shrimp are supposed to be tight and have a flavorful snap when you bite into them, not some mushy thing that’s sadly been sitting around all day under heat lamps and warmed up in some commercial-sized microwave. The last victim of the meal, besides us, was the fish that had more old bay seasoning on it then could ever be justified. Covering up something are we? The chips and water were the best part of “dinner”.

Before we finished, my date’s stomach started to turn and her face discolored. She had to excuse herself from the table.

I waited and sat alone as the walls began closing in. I could feel the oil upon my face and fingertips. I was becoming some sebaceous creature leaking oil out of my pores. I looked down at my hands now glistening and quickly hid them under the table. I then looked around at the many people blissfully enjoying themselves with their “sustenance” and happy wait staff. I couldn’t understand the place or the food. Like why does the food need to be prepared like this? Why ruin it? I waited longer now standing up at the booth while the crowds and families began piling in for another Saturday night frenzy of chewing gelatinous mush that only resembled food. My stomach turned as I thought about the process to get this poor shrimp onto the table in front of me. I was beginning to sweat.

The overly-friendly black waitress with the big butt and name I couldn’t remember inquired about the quality of dinner. “It was okay,” I answered.

“Would you like me to box that up?” We both looked down at the oily stew that reflected the ceiling and overhead lights.

“Ahh, no thanks.”

I paid the bill. Jennifer returned to the table a few minutes later. We walked to the lobby. Jen sat and waited while I went to wash my hands and face in the bathroom.

After escaping, the bumps on the road stirred up the ocean in my belly with a floating biscuit upon the oily sea. I cracked open the windows.

We made it home from the half hour ride without incident. I headed straight upstairs to let the oil pouch drain out of my body. Jen also returned to the only place Red Lobster belonged, in the toilet. Straight into the toilet. We should have taken the dishes straight there and cut out us, the middlemen. We’d be feeling a lot better now. Hopefully those biscuits will never call to us again.

Rhymes with Lake Mallhoe

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An excerpt from the upcoming Emerging Human

Outside of Lake Tahoe with picturesque scenery, Jennifer and I ride into town hoping for a unique old American frontier. We come around the last bend seeking refuge for the night after a long day’s ride out of California. We throttle down into a traffic jam of busses and rv’s. We crawl to ten miles an hour, then five. I have to keep my legs down and feet gliding over the pavement.

There is an Applebees on every corner, an Olive Garden and a Casino. Inauthentic America, all corporate and overrun with clichéd stores and shopping: Padagonia, Gap, Starbucks. This is America. This is our capitalism. Mom and pop shops are no where to be found. So here is some prepackaged authenticity and a cookie cutter dream. There is nothing unique or special as we suck up bus fumes and sit at light after light after light. Corporate machines behind the brick, stone and wood facades. We were hoping for a scenic town of wooden cowboys and working saloons not to mention a thick juicy steak.

I would twist the throttle of my 650 but there are lights and weekend warriors and fat families eating ice cream cones crossing the street in front of us. We all stare at each other waiting for the light to change. Five miles of it. Ten miles of it. I can’t take it after the freedoms of twisting roads and plateaus leading to the deep sky while sandstone, pine, horse and goat farms ran alongside us. There was space to be found in the hills and tall grass. There was a silence except for the howling sixth gear of the engine. Every man needs space. Every man needs silence. There was crisp air that we craved. We can’t stay here, I thought to myself. I can’t think here. I can’t breathe here. Even though we are tired and asses hurt we must keep riding.

Twenty minutes later we take a right turn on the state road on the outskirts of town after forty minutes of corporate bullshit. We scurry up the mountain side in a cool burst of engine combustion. A half hour later in quiet Carson City we shut the bike engine off at a Best Western where two other cars sit in the parking lot. The dry grass hillsides wave in the afternoon sun. We check in for sixty bucks. I roll the bike over to our room. Jennifer and I throw our bike bags on the bed and head back out hearing the click of the door lock.

With grumbling in our stomachs we walk next door to Grandma Hainies Kitchen, for some chicken fried steak, their specialty, a root beer and a salad. That night we slept like the dead in the comforting peace of our minds. I dreamt of being on the road still moving along the contours and natural landscape with the kind azure sky welcoming us.

 

Blue Ridge Birthday Blog

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Short blog this week folks. For my 42nd birthday I am hopping on the motorcycle with my lady and heading to Asheville, NC to ride the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains…

I don’t want to die unfulfilled. This notion has haunted me since I was conscious. I didn’t have the words back then, when I was young, small and insecure, but I had the sensation and the sense. I don’t want to get to the end having lived someone else’s life. It burns like a fuse to fulfill what aches in my soul. Beyond the thickets and hardships and distractions there is a reservoir of light to dive into on a hot day after an arduous and relentless hike. Yet for me it can only be found by fulfilling a purpose and that purpose is where I find God.

This is the reason I have quit jobs, often did poorly in school, didn’t marry, didn’t compromise, because I could not, would not, take my soul’s eye, mind’s eye, and heart, off of the path.

I was in the garage yesterday and stumbled upon old pictures of myself as a boy, maybe three or four years old. There was one of me standing in our side yard next to the short row of pine trees.  I had a thick head of hair and a bowl haircut while sporting my brown jacket that displayed colorful geometric shapes. It was one of my favs. The jacket that is, not the bowl haircut. But I had the burden in those anguished brown eyes, that same weight I have sitting here and writing this. And it is only with action and fulfillment do I free myself.

 

Motorcycling & Movement

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When the world eats at my sanity and pisses me off or I just need to stop seeing the same four walls of my home office, I walk into the garage to fire up the red 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650. Often I need movement to flush the stagnant puddle of my mind.

When the sun is shining and it’s warm enough, I hop on the bike, pull in the clutch, lift the gear arm with my left foot and pop it into first. Like a baby needing to be soothed the movement helps me de-stress and gets me focused on the moment and simpler things.

With the engine revving under me and the handle bar grips held tight the intensity of the movement begins rocking me into a state of focus. With my mind alert and my life on the line, the bills, incompetent politics of the world, my own incompetence and bad decisions, fade away, while frustrations are kept at bay. The senses heighten with each gear and each bend as I leave the neighborhood seeking my favorite windy roads at the state park a few miles away. There are no intersections at the park, no stops signs, no lights. I carve up the mountainside leaning in and breathing deep.

I twist the throttle under my wrist increasing speeds then easing off the gas and popping the bike into another gear moving faster feeling the wind, tasting the air.

It is a meditation and therapy to be on a motorcycle. Ideas are figured out while pure focus and survival instincts lock in. Ideas that were stuck in the brain get clarified while ones that weighed upon my soul just minutes earlier get left on the roadway. Patterns and stuck feelings loosen. There is a feeling of comfort riding the earth’s welcoming bosom.

I must focus completely while riding a motorcycle for my life is on the line. Everything from gravel to sticks to squirrels to bad inattentive drivers is the enemy.

Unlike a car where small mistakes often have no results, or a possible fender bender, a mistake on a bike can be death if I am not riding with eyes wide and mind alert scanning the road surface and sides for danger.

With each rotation of my wheels the contours of the road ease my mind. The world at that point can piss off. I grab the bike tighter with my legs to form a bond as we become one leaning above the mountain stream twenty feet below. The bike responds to my touch and tight control.

I am anonymous in my jacket and helmet with tinted shield and samurai graphics as I slice through the countryside.

Movement heals my wounds with each mile and twist of the throttle as I blend deeper into the wood and rock landscape. I ride everywhere I can whenever I can. There are always bills and other headaches to keep me going. Not that I need them to get me to ride. But luckily, the bike is always ready for a country road and I think enjoys the fresh air as much as I do.

Driving, Justice, and Route 9

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Everywhere I go in lower New York I see the police, not once in a while but every mile or two. They are driving the streets or sitting on the roadside watching our moves, pulling cars over, making money for the town and state. I never feel safer, but pass them feeling watched.

I may drift, or be in a rutted lane with potholes(as many roads have because of the lack of maintenance) shifting the car around concerned it will look like I’m driving drunk; or I may sneeze, or pick my nose, but usually nothing that warrants any attention from Johnny Law or at least, no attention is desired.

However, I often see police running stop lights themselves, flashing their lights, driving through, then shutting them off again, or making a u-turn in a no u-turn place. I also see a lot of cops driving with cell phones to their ears. I paid $115 last year for driving and talking without a hands-free device. And yet cops are enforcing the very laws they are breaking. We have all seen police cars burning down the highway doing 90 for no good reason at all. Just because they can.

My problem is these are the guys who are supposed to be upholding the law, and in certain ways should be better at it than anyone, because this is their job. Their job is justice. Like a preacher or religious leader, they should be the ones showing us all how to behave, but I guess religious leaders have abused their positions more times than any of us care to remember.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I like police men and women. They have an honorable and dangerous job. Many of them take their power very seriously and respect what they do and have earned our thanks and trust.

Yet to be our best is something for us all to strive towards. If we fall short then so be it, but we have to at least shoot for the higher callings of our natures. That makes the world a better place and pushes it and us forward.

I feel so much less safe with so many cops. Yet they are simply doing the job they have been asked to do- even when they pull us over like it’s July 4th with lights flashing. A few weeks ago I was driving on Route 9 heading south around 11pm when two police cruisers rolled up quickly behind me as if they were bored and only keeping busy. I was nervous they were going to pull me over though I was doing the speed limit. Instead they pulled over an older model Nissan needing a little body work done. That guy was doing the speed limit too.

Obviously this is a way to make more money for the state after property taxes and states taxes and county taxes and 8% local sales taxes have dried up. And now there is a driving tax with lights and intimidation.

Around here I see a cop every mile or two. When I’ve been out west or deep into New England I’ve gone hours or days without seeing a cop.

Lastly, I see “Work Zone” signs all of the time, yet often see no work being done. Often orange cones sit passively without a road worker for miles. A work zone consists of actual work with actual men and women. Orange cones don’t work.

I’m saying we all need to try harder to be our best, to make this country better. It is too easy for laws to be passed that do not move us forward and instead manipulate the public. It appears easier to be our worst, but it eats at our country and us as individuals, like a virus. I am a fool hearty idealist, I know. It’s all I can be.

What are your thoughts on seeing more police driving the roads or work zones with no work? Please comment below.

 

 

Traditional or Self Publishing?

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After finishing my novel, The Reluctant Human, which I bared for many long years like a child that I needed to give birth to: I expected it to go straight to #1 (or a best sellers list at least). Oh wait, I needed to find a publisher first. Oh wait, I needed an agent. Oh wait, damn it, before that I needed “trusted” writer friends to read it.

After a few tweaks and changes and character arc alterations I called it done once again. I read some good advice in Stephen King’s great book On Writing. ‘If everyone has the same problem, change it. If everyone has a different concern, leave it alone.’ I applied that principle.

Anyway, I needed an agent. I wasn’t going to be some self-published guy. That was silly talk. I was a “real” writer. So I picked up the writer’s bibles for agents and publishing houses: Jeff Herman’s Guide To Agents and Writers Marketplace. I got myself a chicken parm sub from the local pizza joint and started reading about query letters.

Hmm, many agents weren’t interested in new writers and weren’t taking on new clients, but a few were. Hmm, most of those were Romance or YA agents yet I didn’t see anybody specifically listing “slice of life book regarding today’s modern struggle…” Anyway, I continued my search.

Hell, it was gonna be a long shot to find an agent…

My book didn’t really fit into any sort of “genre” literature, which made it even harder to find an agent. It was kind of a niche book: Half Henry Miller/Half Charles Bukowski with a sprinkle of Herman Hesse.

I decided on a few agents anyway, crafted a query letter and attempted to pitch my book. Almost every time however I had a problem with the email. It was sent too fast or formatting somehow got thrown off or it was deleted due to a “wandering mouse”. I sent off about a dozen. Then waited. Then waited some more. Got nothing. Then more of nothing.

At this time a friend mentioned a buddy of his who had sold a number of books on Amazon via KDP, which is their e-book sub-company. I spoke to his friend and gleaned whatever info I could.

He said to put it on KDP then keep looking for an agent. There is no commitment. I would keep 70% of royalties for e-books and owned the copyright. It was obvious what I should do and it took an instant. Well almost an instant. He said he made about $1500 the first month on KDP but less since then. I was in.

So I waited for agents but got rolling with KDP.

As writers, we bust our asses to write, quite often for years. Then traditionally we are supposed to send off query and follow up emails then wait for the crickets. In doing so, we give up all of our power to someone else. I received a few responses back “it will take several months to get back to you” is one of their pat responses. Or “Not for us”. Fine.

Agents were the gatekeepers. Not anymore. Really, what an agent does is solicit a publisher to get a piece published. Pretty simple. They take what they think they can sell to their often very select clients who only publish very specific things. That can take months or years or never. Now we wait longer? UGGH! What they think may be good or bad or sellable may have nothing to do with quality. Gone With The Wind was rejected over 40 times! Henry Miller was rejected for years. JK Rowling was rejected over a hundred times! Hmm, agents how many billions did you lose on those great decisions? Agents are readers just like you and me.

Everything that I have read about publishers (the big houses, not prisons) is they want a writer to blog, to have a considerable author platform on Facebook, Twitter, and maintain a website. So why do I need them you ask? Well they may offer a small advance and they will have editing and graphic services. Oh and they typically own the book.

One day I may seek them out again, but not for now…

I formatted the book and after bugging friends and family for sales to get it going, which I am grateful for, I finally started selling a few each day. Then I got on a small list that increased sales to 8-10 a day. No record breaker, but movement. Getting it out there. Reaching people.

A couple nuggets I have learned about self or indie publishing:

Pro: You get to control the content and cover of your book, etc.

Con: You get to control the content and cover of your book, etc.

Frankly, building a marketing campaign and author platform is exhausting, but it’s mine.

A close friend recently reminded me about the small stuff and building one’s reach with small literary journals who print short fiction. He reminded me that they have a reader base built in. Novel idea. Or I should say short story idea. So I have added that to my approach and will be sending out a few short pieces to them.

Officially, I am a self-published author braving the elements. However, just like anything else, if people don’t know something exists, it doesn’t. It’s the same idea as the tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it. It is not a sprint to success but a marathon. It is about being consistent, working hard, and reaching readers one by one. So drink lots of water.

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