Friday Feature: @TheTallOne

Well blow me down with a feather (never really understood that idiom) – it’s Friday once more. That, of course, means that we get to sink our teeth into another Friday Feature and learn more about a Proser that we may or may not be aware of. This week we head to California and nerd out with chap that is proud, and rightly so, of his geek status. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the mysterious @TheTallOne

P: What is your given name and your Proser username?

T: At this moment I will keep my given name to myself, for reasons and stuff. However, my username is TheTallOne. It is play on a nickname my dad gave me long ago, I guess when he had high hopes for a tall son. I am not.

I am 35 and married, as well as a father of 3. I love writing and been doing so for a while now, though my other hobbies sometimes hog my time. All of them are proper time sucks. Whether they be reading, blacksmithing, hunting, or video games. Even now Fallout 4 is calling my name. I must explore the wasteland!

I also am a true geek; bring on the comic books and swords. I own both. I even taught medieval dagger and wrestling for a while.

What you should come away after reading all that be here is, this one has a nerd soul.

P: Where do you live?

T: I currently reside in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Where? you may wonder since that is still a pretty big area, about an hour away from Yosemite. I am also neck deep in wierdos and hicks. This is fine, considering I am both.

P: What is your occupation?

T: I work at a reclaimed lumber yard. My jobs there include, nail puller, moulder operation, machinist, knife grinder, sawyer, electrician, sales, running the social media pages, and research and development. I wish I could say my many jobs are a testament to my intelligence and versatility, but the real reason is because it is a small company and the lot of us wear many hats. The thing I love about it is the history. While most of the wood comes from the west coast, and thus the history isn’t as deep and rich as reclaimed lumber yards on the east coast, it still is history. I find this awesome, the truest definition of the word, inspiring awe. We have wood from Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Stanford University, and Port of Oakland Army Base to name a few.

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

T: I started out reading, a lot. Mostly books your average kid could find at the library. I was that nerd who spent his recesses there. A big change occurred when I hit ten, I read Tarzan of the Apes. Slowly I branched out in my reading to more grown up books and I think writing was just the next step. You read enough and you start to think, hey I can do this. I also stumbled across an old storage chest of my dad’s. In it were pages of his attempts at writing. These discoveries lead to my dad writing again, and we even tried writing together. That didn’t work out so well. His style was already deeply seated and mine was still evolving.

Sadly, writing and I seem to have a love hate relationship. I am a glorified High School dropout. I passed my GED with flying colors, but only due to my hunger for reading. When it came to the English I could tell which sentence was right just on feel, but for the love of god I couldn’t tell you why. This makes it harder when I write. I miss my mistakes; simply put all my writing feels right, because it is mine. People will sometimes read my stuff and say, “This sentence is passive.” And I would be like, “What the frack does that mean?” Or while using a word program it will tell me my sentence is wrong and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. Needless to say, I am now making a concerted effort to learn proper grammar.

P: What value does reading add to both your personal and professional life?

T: I still read a lot, anywhere from 40 to 70 books a year. I have had friends and family describe me as well read. I don’t think this is apt seeing as I read mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy, with a touch of Westerns, a dash of Thriller and History, and liberal smattering of Comic Books. As such, this reading has given me a vast storage of truly useless information.

My writing style is a bit of everything because of my tastes, as is my choice in what I write. Though I think Edgar Rice Burroughs still heavily influences my overall style, Stephen King and Jim Butcher have earned a place as well.

I think reading is important, if you want to write, you need to read. I mean if you want to be a filmmaker, you study films. Writing should be treated the same.

P: Can you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?

T: Reading wise, I am reading about 4 books right now. The Long Sword by Christian Cameron, Black Spark by AL K. Lin, The Outlaw by Alan Janney, Stone and A Hard Place by R.L. King. I jump back and forth depending time and how I am feeling.

With writing I am tackling a few rewrites. One is my first completed novel, which I am hoping will spur on my finishing the sequel. They are westerns, a poorly received and vastly underappreciated genre. Thus, it is unlikely I will be published. The other is a rewrite of something I started and never finished when I was about 17. It is terrible, it is possible I am just being extra hard on myself, or it is just that terrible. My future posts may reflect these separate attempts, or they may just be random, misplaced, and unfinished thoughts.

P: What do you love about Prose?

T: Validate me! Just kidding—okay there is a little bit of that. I always worry that my perceived skill and knack for writing is just that. So it is nice to get encouragement from fellow writers. I will admit to hitting the refresh button a little too much after a post to get a feel for what you all think.

Than there are all the various challenges. I find these are a good kick in the butt to get the old juices flowing.

I also enjoy reading, so there is plenty of that to do. I wish I could do more of the encouraging for others, but I am not a very social creature and my grammar sucks the butt of many monkeys. So I am fearful that my poorly written suggestions will ignored as the ramblings of an idjit. I am working on getting over this, so give me time. But I have been told I am a great person to bounce ideas off of. So if you want the opinion of this weirdly well-read idjit, drop me a line.

The big thing, you can only really talk about writing with writers, so it is nice to have a place to do so. I use to be part of writing groups, but I had to drive up to an hour away, and sometimes further, just to be a part of the group. It is so nice to have a convenient place full of versatile people of all walks of life to be among.

P: Is there one book that you would recommend everybody should read before they die?

T: Not really. There are too many. I would suggest anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs; I am partial to Tarzan and The Mucker. Tarzan, because, reasons. Why The Mucker, well two words, cannibal samurai. I will throw in Stephen King’s The Shinning. Jack’s slow decent into madness is really well done. I also love Jim Butcher, anything by him. Go forth and read is really all that matters, whatever it may be.

P: Do you have an unsung hero who got you into reading and/or writing?

T: My parents, they didn’t stop me from reading, even if it was 3 o’clock in the morning. That elementary school Librarian, sadly I have forgotten her name, she allowed me to hang out with her books and check out more than I was supposed to. Thereafter it was my family and friends who encouraged my writing, without them I don’t know if I would have gotten this far.

P: Describe yourself in three words!

T: Creatively lost dumbbutt.

P: Is there one quote, from a writer or otherwise, that sums you up? 

T: “The first draft of anything is shit.” Allegedly Ernest Hemingway.

If he really said this or not matters little, because it is so true. I have to beat my ego down, you may have notice this, so as to not get enamored with my own perceived cleverness. Reminding myself of these words help.

P: Favourite music to write and/or read to?

P: Angry stuff when I need to write angry or a fight scene. I got to be careful though; shuffle is sometimes not your friend. Going from Rage against the Machine to Adele can be jarring to my flow when I am trying to write an aggressive action scene. Any other time, shuffle and come what may.

P: You climb out of a time machine into a dystopian future with no books. What do you tell them?

T: You are all idiots.

Awesome stuff. Thanks so much to @TheTallOne who gave such honest and humorous answers in this great interview. You know the drill: if you don’t already do so, please go follow him, interact with him and validate him immediately. If you want to feature, or want someone else on Prose to feature, then do please get in touch at info@theprose.com