![]() You see, killing animals was where food came from, and for me that was work, not fun. I didn’t enjoy killing animals, but it was part of my job and I was really good at it. No matter how poor we got, there was always an ammo budget. I remember one Christmas where all my presents were a new pair of work gloves and a brick of. As farmers, you had your good years and your bad years. Basically, I shot a lot of animals growing up. Nothing prevents this quite like shooting the little buggers. Squirrels and rabbits would burrow into our irrigation ditches, and then when you ran water down them, they would break and flood the roads. She was impressed.īesides cow hoisting and hay tossing, I was also our farm’s pest eradicator. She had to read it herself and then give me a quiz. I polished off Dune when I was about ten. The first sci-fi I was introduced to was John Dalmas, and from there I went on a crazed spiral of reading everything possible. ![]() It would be another twenty-five years before I discovered that I could actually make money at it. I even illustrated them with dragons and swords and lots of explosions, because why the hell not? The other kids loved them, and suddenly I discovered that I was good at making crap up to entertain people. I started writing little stories in my school notebooks. Feist and David Eddings, whole new worlds opened, and I knew that I wanted to write fantasy. Somebody my mom knew had picked it up at a yard sale. The first real fantasy novel I ever read was Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. There was just something heroic about those that caught my imagination. I kept one of his index pages and checked off every book as I read it. The first author I loved was Louis L’Amour. Two hours on the school bus everyday gives you plenty of extra reading time. El Nido had a tiny library, and by the time I was about twelve I had read everything there. My dad considered reading fiction a complete waste of time, since reading time should be devoted to information related to important things, like cows or tractors. It was my mom that installed a love of reading in me. I was that one kid that always had a book in my hands and was usually reading at recess instead of actually doing stuff. So rather than play a lot of sports, I preferred to read books. ![]() Ironically, I was also strong as an ox because I had to hoist bales of hay every day, but when you drink a gallon of extra-whole-super-plus-fat milk direct from the tank daily, (all you can drink, and it’s sorta free!) you do tend to chub up. Looking back, I suppose I would describe myself as a geeky, fat kid. (as you will see, these two things will be a theme in my life). There’s not a whole lot of interest in El Nido, so I read a lot of books and I shot a lot of guns. El Nido was a tiny little town, where the cows far outnumbered the people. I grew up on a dairy farm, where I received my black belt in the ancient art of Portuguese Shovel Fighting, because nothing motivates a Holstein to move its fat ass into the milk barn like a good shovel on the snout. I’ve had this blog for three years now, so I figured I should actually put some information on this page. Merchant of Death (retired). Firearms Instructor.
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