Author Archives: C. A. Sanders

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About C. A. Sanders

Hi, everyone. I am a semi-established writer of fiction and non-fiction. I live in Rockland County, NY, where I ply my trade and occasionally get paid for it. You can see my full website, with links to published work and my blog, at www.casanders.net

Re: Michael Vick and the Jets

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My love for the Jets is unconditional, even when they pick up a guy like Michael Vick.  I do not like Michael Vick (Ron Mexico), but I also believe in second chances.  His conviction came 7 years ago, and he served 3 years in jail.  He paid his debt.  There’s no need to continue to punish him.  He’s shown some impressive personal growth since his return, the best example being the Riley Cooper incident from last year. I don’t have a problem with him playing for my team.  If a person cannot receive redemption, then society has failed.

From a football perspective, it’s a great move.  There’s no other quarterback out there that would be a better mentor to Geno Smith.  Vick is the archetype that the Jets want Geno to be.  Here’s hoping he can get him there.

RAW on Monday

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I wanted to post about this yesterday, but I posted about Val’s anthology instead.

Damn, that was a good RAW this week!  They really cranked it up, not a surprise since they were in Chicago, Ground Zero for the CM Punk chants.  There was only one way to keep those chants down, and that’s by blowing them away with a great show.

Let’s start with Paul Heyman’s promo.  I go back a long way with Paul, as I was a big ECW fan back in the 90s.  He is just about the best promo guy the WWE has right now, and he tore the crowd apart.  First, he teases a Punk return, and pulls the rug out from under the crowd.  Then he turns it back on the audience, seamlessly moving into a promo from Brock/Taker.  Just like that, he infuriates the crowd, gives Punk heel heat, and sets up motivation for the WM battle.  Not that I needed any.  Taker/Brock is sure to be a great match.  They can both go all out, since they only wrestle once a year.

They actually let Brock talk.  More surprising, he was good.  When he shouted his name the way Heyman does, it was a bit intimidating.  F5ing a 400 pound man into a table is always intimidating too.  Poor Mark Henry, back to jobbing.

Bam!  Right into The Usos/NAO.  I’ve been waiting a long time for the Usos to get the belt, and I wasn’t disappointed.  great match, satisfying victory.

The Big E/ Real Americans stuff I could do without.  It was only in there to show character development between Swags and Cesaro.  The Giant Swing was cool though.

If The Shield and Wyatts keep putting on 5 star matches in the middle of the show, the second half is going to be a let down.  I can’t get enough of these guys.  Tonight was Seth Rollins’ turn to show off.  He doesn’t get much spotlight behind Reigns and Ambrose, but man, what an agile dude.  Suicide dives over the top rope. That’s some crazy luchador stuff right there.  I also like that he walked out on his team.  It made perfect sense to me (“you sort it out”).  If they are gonna leave him high and dry (as they did) so can he.  They deserved the constant “this is awesome” chant.

And how good has Roman Reigns gotten in the past year?  He went from being an athletic big guy with little ring skill to a breakout star.  His in ring ability rivals his partners at this point, not to mention that he has a look that’ll get you pregnant faster than an Old Spice commercial.

Ah Emma, Emma, Emma.  I love you so much.  Not only were you trained by Lance Storm, but your finisher is The Muta Lock, one of my all time favs.  When Diva wrestling is good, it’s really good.  Of course, when it’s bad, it’s time for a bathroom break.

Speaking of bathroom breaks, Seamus/Christian was bad enough to get a “this is awful” chant.  It was, it really was.  Somewhere, the Captain lost his Charisma.

I can’t even comment of the Bellas/Aksana & Fox.  Disappointing.  I expect more from the Bellas.

The Bryan promo was excellent, though I could’ve done without the misogyny involved in the “why don’t you put on your wife’s skirt” line.  It’s a minor offense in the promo, but come on man.

I loved that they bookened the last hour with Bryan.  If you don’t want Punk chants, get them to scream YES!

Ziggles and Del Rio didn’t do much for me.  Del Rio is the modern day Steve Blackman: A talented wrestler with MMA history, with no charisma at all.  Ziggles is going to be big, but not for a few years.  Aaron Paul was unnecessary, and kind of a distraction.  I lament that he went from a great show like Breaking Bad to this cheesy Need For Speed crap.

Paul Bearer in the Hall of Fame makes me happy.  Dare we see emotion from Taker during the induction?  Probably not, but I bet Kane and Foley will cry.

Rusev reminds me of Taz or Rhyno.  Those are good things to be.

Even Daniel Bryan couldn’t save his match with Batista.  Lord knows he tried, but Batista is so bad, so very bad.  It was still decent, but not on the level I expect from D-Bry.

Stephanie did kinda save it with the YES chant at the end.  She is so good at being a corporate asshole.

All in all, it was a very entertaining RAW.  I would’ve liked to see the Rhodes in there somewhere, but nothing’s perfect.

As an aside, they have to change the main event for WM.  No one wants to see two heels fight for the championship, especially when one has limited ring skills, and they both have mediocre promo skills. I’d fix it next week by having Mr. McMahon come out and put Bryan in as a triple threat.  The crowd needs somebody to cheer for.

 

The Collected Works of Valerie Z. Lewis

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For the past few weeks I have been working hard on Valerie’s anthology.  It finally went live on Kindle last week.

This is the most important thing that I have ever done.  I’ve never stressed about my own work the way that I have about hers.  I guess because it’s permanent.  I can always edit my own stuff, but Val is gone.  Her stories are in my hands now, and the responsibility of that is overwhelming.  It has to be perfect.  I won’t settle for anything less than perfect.

That’s not true.  I’m sure that there are some problems with it that I haven’t seen.  Knowing that they are out there kills me.

Valerie was a much more talented writer than me.  She was a professor at Mercy College. When she died, she was entering a PhD program for Writing.  I’d estimate that there are only a thousand of so Doctors’ of Writing out there.  Literature, there are plenty.  Specifically Writing, a scant few.

But telling people that she was a great writer isn’t enough.  I feared that her stories would fall into obscurity. She deserved a better fate.

Right now the anthology is available for $1.99 on Amazon.  Mercy College set up a merit award in her name, and all of the proceeds are going to it.  Her stories deserve to be read.  For two dollars, you’re getting something that will change you.  She changed me.

Valerie on fire escape from below

New Story: If You Leave Me

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Hey there dear readers.  I have a story, “If You Leave Me,” in the anthology Twisted Love. If you don’t want to invest the money in buying Song of Simon, or the time in reading “The Watchmage of Old New York,” I’d recommend starting here.  It’s completely FREE, and it’s a pretty good story.  As one fellow author said, “It’s the only zombie story that gets you right in the feels.”

This was a very difficult story to write.  I started it not long after my girlfriend Valerie died.  I began having nightmares that she was still alive and trying to dig her way out of the grave.  I combined it with my own fear that I would someday move on and find someone else to love (a fear that I still have, but that’s a completely different issue).  Writing this helped make the nightmares go away (mostly).

The other stories and poems in the anthology are very good too.  You should download it.

Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger

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I’ve been thinking about this post for years.

I used to cover music for several magazines back in the day, especially in the New York area.  Part of the responsibility was to write obituaries, and I remember one day thinking that i’d have to write one for Pete.  I swatted the thought down, not being able to think that far into the future.  Then I wrote one for his brother Mike.  Then last year I wrote one for his wife Toshi.  I knew it was going to happen, and I knew that it would hurt me bad.

I met Pete several times.  I am a regular at his Clearwater Festival, the music festival that supports his environmental group, Clearwater.  As I child, I went on a field trip and sailed on the Clearwater.  I never forgot the rocking of the waves or the singing crew.  It’s one of my fondest memories.

There will be other obits out there that go into all his accomplishments, all the fantastic songs he wrote or popularized, the way he stood up to Joe McCarthy and embraced the Civil Rights Movement, his support of the New York music scene, his dedication to the environment.  Maybe they’ll talk about the movement to nominate him for a Nobel Prize. That’s all academic.

What they can’t tell you is how he made you feel. He made you want to sing.

I never did a full interview with him, but I talked to him many times.  He had a way about him, and when he spoke, you listened.  Not that he was the kind of voice that demanded attention.  It was the other way around.  He was humble and easy going, but possessed of a simple wisdom that made you want to listen for hours.  He made you want to sing.

He was tall.  Really tall. Until you’ve seen him in person, you don’t realize just how tall he was.  Even at 94, he was still this white-haired beanpole in a fisherman’s hat.  He gave off this air of mental and spiritual strength. He made you want to sing.

And so we sang.  He took the stage and led us, and we sang.  Great waves of people singing “Turn Turn Turn” or “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” while he played the long neck banjo or the 12 string.  People of every gender, color and class joining their voices into one.

Pete Seeger is gone, but songs last forever.  Sing for Pete’s sake.

Sing for Pete’s sake

A Delayed Eulogy for Valerie

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One year ago today, my girlfriend Valerie passed away.  It was very sudden. Within three days she was gone.  I didn’t give a eulogy at her funeral, because I was too broken hearted to speak, so I’m going to do it now.

I’m going to try to keep the melodrama to myself.  I’ve written at length about how much I miss and love her.  But the truth is that she’s still a mystery to me.

We didn’t date for very long.  We started talking in early November of 2011 (just before I became homeless) but didn’t have a face-to-face date until early January.  A year is not a lifetime, but she was such a complex, deep, layered, interesting individual that even if we had a lifetime, she would continue to surprise me.

She had STRONG tattooed on one of her wrists, but it could have sat on her fist.  Her words were like cannon balls that burst through anything in their path.  She was not afraid of anyone, and if need be, she would kick your ass.  But she was not there for destruction, she was there to help.  She was the kind of person that could start a revolution, but for the right reasons.  She helped people. She gave till it hurt.  She shielded people with her strength until they took that strength upon themselves.

But she was also gentle and shy.  Being alone triggered panic attacks.  She didn’t believe in herself as much as she should’ve.  She was often passive.  I know that this wasn’t always the case, but this was the Val that I knew.  She was multifaceted, like a cut ruby.  She was large, she contained multitudes (I wish I had a Wilde quote to use there, but I’ll settle for Whitman).

She was the most brilliant writer that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  Her short stories are masterpieces.  She had nearly 25 stories published in magazines, many quite prestigious. Her poetry is sharp and unyielding, like the knife she carried in her bag.  Her novel is not just adorable and hilarious, but it is a wry view of the double standard between pursuit in straight romance novels and gay ones.

She was also a caring teacher who brought the best out of her students.  She never left a student behind. She was so beloved by her students and coworkers that Mercy College set up a scholarship in her name.

I don’t know what else to say.  She was the best person that I ever knew.  She saved me. My only regret is that I didn’t get to spend the rest of my life with her.  I’m glad that she got to spend the rest of her life with me.

Me and Val, with her sister Jean and brother in law Kenny. Jan 2013. I think that this is the last picture of her before she died.

Me and Val, with her sister Jean and brother in law Kenny. Jan 2013. I think that this is the last picture of her before she died.

New Watchmage!

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For those of you that are ready my serial “The Watchmage of Old New York,” chapter 38 is ready.  I also decided to go back to a weekly schedule instead of biweekly.  We’re nearing the end, so if you have serial anxiety because you don’t like to wait, you can start now.  You won’t reach the end by the time it’s done.  Believe me, it’s worth the read.

It’s FREE with registration at Jukepop Serials.  If you like history, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, or New York city, you’ll love it.

Captain Marvel and Revisionist History (link below)

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I’ve mentioned the blog The Middle Spaces before as my go-to site for intelligent discourse about comics.  I’m sending you a link to a recent post about Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) which discusses feminist theory, revisionist history, and the little known WASPs of WWII.  I’m including the first few paragraphs below, and then a link.  You should read this.

As I mentioned in my post “Captain Marvel and More Black Iron Man,” in 2012 Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel (sometimes Warbird, once Binary) took up the name Captain Marvel in a new (but now discontinued) series by that name written by Kelly Sue DeConnick—one of the few women currently writing mainstream comics.  While I developed an appreciation of disappointment felt by some fans regarding Monica Rambeau’s loss of the “Captain Marvel” name, I still like the idea of Carol Danvers using the name and think it works in the scope of her military background and source of her powers.

msmarvelvol1no1Rereading the first major story arc in DeConnick’s series I also came to appreciate her attempt to write Ms./Captain Marvel into a revisionist feminist text. It struck me as a laudable attempt to make manifest the purported feminist subtext of the character.  The “Ms.” part of her former name alone suggests the kind of Gloria Steinem independence associated with the Second Wave of feminism of the era when the first Ms. Marvel title was published. Of course, being written and drawn by men has undermined this ostensible subtext many times over—starting with her halter-top, sometimes backless, sometime mid-riff showing  costume and reaching its height when she was kidnapped, mind controlled, raped, forced to give birth to her own attacker and then allowed to be carried off again “to be happy” in another dimension with her assailant.  Luckily, that was all undone (kind of).

It bears mentioning that when I use the words “revisionist” or “revisionism” in terms of history, I do not mean this pejoratively in the least bit. History requires revision, not only because of the various social and cultural forces that obscure the achievements of and the crimes against various people of different races, genders, classes, etc… but also to counteract the ridiculous notion that there is a such thing as a monolithic “history,” as opposed to competing stories comprised of the different ways knowledge is created through analysis, research and story-telling.  History needs continual revision because it is not only what is being told, but how it is being told.  Some of the historical events that DeConnick uses in this arc are not necessarily newly revealed (to many), but the way in which she uses them are new.

Read the full article here.

Good Ol’ Peter Parker

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So it looks like Otto Octavius is ending his vacation inside of Peter Parker’s body and Pete’s gonna be back soon.  I haven’t been reading the series (I prefer to wait for trade paperbacks), but I’ve been intrigued by the whole idea.  From what I’ve heard from my fellow geekerlings, it’s been a great run.

Superior?

Otto’s always been a complex villain, and the idea of him taking over Spider-Man’s body to prove himself a “superior” hero is great.  He doesn’t have the emotional hangups that Peter does (he has a different set of hangups) and in many ways, that makes him better at fighting “evil.”

My friend Marc Buxton does a great analysis here, and if Marc says it (and it’s about comics) it’s probably true.

The thing about Otto is that he is a creature of cold logic, free of encumbering emotions.  This allows him to make the hard decisions, stuff that Peter could never do.  But in the end, he lacks Peter’s humanity, and that’s the spark that makes a true hero.

If you don’t read The Middle Spaces yet, you should.  It’s a great comic resource, and the author, Osvaldo, is one of my best friends.  He wrote an article some time back about how Marvel has embraced a gray area of justice, where heroes will do unheroic things, such as use torture villains or exile The Hulk to a far off planet.  Even Spider-Man beat a suspect to get information out of him at one point, which is completely out of character for him, and in my opinion makes him less heroic.

I think that establishing the contrast between Peter and Otto will return Pete to his previous state, though that depends on the writer.  They could have him go the other way and incorporate some of Otto’s methods, which I think is a terrible idea.

In the forthcoming novelized version of my serial, The Watchmage of Old New York (free with registration, blah blah blah), the main character suffers through a similar crisis of faith.  If you have near unlimited power, how do you avoid overusing it to mold the world in your image?  How do you punish evil without succumbing to it? The Superman comics have dealt with the same thing over the years, the latest example being the video game Injustice, which I enjoyed very much.

So let me be the first to welcome Peter Parker back into his own body.  Otto’s good, but not “superior.”

Also, I got a new phone today and all the fancy shit on it is overwhelming me.  I’m not computer illiterate, but I compute on a 4th grade level.