life thoughts

 by Jon F. Merz

Be Amazing Today

I know. I know.

It’s Monday.

I woke up at 5:37am to go to the bathroom and then stumbled back into bed for another 90 minutes that seemed to fly by in exactly 30 seconds. I had a great weekend and would like nothing better than to sleep away today, rest, and get serious tomorrow. I’m willing to bet a lot of you feel something pretty similar to how I’m feeling right now.

So consider this a joint motivational speech – I’m trying to get cranked up as much as I’m trying to crank you up.

And to do that, I’ll just ask a simple question: how will you be amazing today?

It’s a fairly innocuous question. Nothing much to it, frankly. But I’ve found in the past that asking that question has a cool effect on me. I may not have an answer when I first ask the question in the morning, but throughout the day I find myself doing more than I thought I would at the start of the day. And when I finally crawl into bed at night and pull the covers up, asking the question: “how was I amazing today?” invariably produces several answers and leads to being very satisfied with how the day progressed. Maybe I cranked out more words than I thought I would. Maybe I got caught up on email. Maybe I got going on that other project that had languished.

I don’t purport to be some incredible life coach with all the answers – I can’t tell you how to rewire your neurology or expunge a traumatic past or any number of other things that society seems intent on insisting we all suffer from. But I can show you some of the things that I use to drive my own life forward and be successful at what I do. When I was in Basic Training, motivation was easy: drill instructors would shout and scream until you got it done and got it done right. In the real world, motivation has to come from within you – you have to be a self-starter and a self-finisher. As you reach goals, set new ones. Quest ever on and never get complacent. You’re the only one who will care, no matter how many “life coaches” or “mentors” or “restorative life energy therapists” you hire.

At the start of the day, it’s just you.

At the end of the day, it’s just you.

We all have triggers that can be used to propel us further ahead on the fuel of never-ending potential. It’s just a matter of finding them. Sometimes those triggers are profound and earth-shaking things, like a near-death experience, skydiving, and reconnecting with an old love.

Sometimes, they’re far simpler.

Sometimes, they’re six-word questions.

“How will you be amazing today?”

You may not know the answer now. But you will soon enough.

Have a fantastic week everyone.

(PS: My new DVD series “Thermonuclearize Your Success NOW with Old Sweaty Socks and Paprika” is due in stores in time for the holiday shopping season, so don’t forget to grab the set. It’s just $999 bucks, which is far cheaper-looking and makes you feel better than spending $1000.)

in common sense / life thoughts 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Where Zero Came From

A lot of people have written email asking me about the character of Zero from my Lawson series of urban fantasy thrillers. In the books, he plays Lawson’s mentor, of sorts. When Lawson graduated from his Fixer training, he was apprenticed to Zero – a legendary Fixer himself – to get real-world experience. But a simple apprenticeship led to a much deeper friendship and as such, Zero’s character has been seen a lot more than I’d originally planned.

But where does Zero come from? Is he, like many characters that authors write, a combination of people we know?

The simple answer is no. Zero is very much based on one particular person in my life. And I’d like to shine a light on that person now – even if I don’t happen to use his full name.

Ken H. was one of my closest pals back when I was doing private security and protection work. A literal mountain of a man, Ken stood at least six feet five inches and towered over pretty much everyone. He was built like a linebacker and he could move just as fast as one if the situation demanded it. He was from a blue-collar family north of Boston in Peabody and he’d lost his father early on, much like I did. Ken had come up the hard way, having to scrape and scrimp for everything he ever got. And he had a work ethic that reflected that drive – you know the type of person that never takes anything for granted, but just puts his nose to the grindstone until he achieves what he set out to achieve. Ken was like that.

When we used to work down by Boston’s waterfront, we’d take walks at lunch. This time of year meant that the ladies of the Financial District would be out in full force and Ken was a great admirer of the ladies. So was I, for that matter. But for all his blue-collar sensibility, and the stereotypes that people often attribute to that, Ken was extremely intelligent. He wouldn’t quote long passages by Plato or Socrates, but Ken had a keen insight into human behavior and I really enjoyed our talks while we strolled through the gardens of legs.

Over the years, Ken and I became close friends. We were in a number of high-stress situations that bonded us together in a way that only being in high-stress situations can. And we knew that we had each other’s back. There are few things more important than knowing who you’re able to trust your life to. For me, Ken was one of those men I could trust without reservation. And he counted on me in the same fashion. Ken was the first person to ever tell me that he was my number one fan. “Some day, your books are going to be everywhere. They’re amazing.” I was still struggling to find an agent or a publisher at the time and his forecast seemed unlikely.

“I’m going to create a character based on you,” I told him one day. Ken thought that was about the coolest thing he’d ever heard. And years later, when Lawson was born, Zero wasn’t far behind. In some ways, Zero was even easier to create because he already existed as Ken.

When I was fired for storing my novel-in-progress on the company computer, Ken proved that he had my back all over again. He was the only man I worked with who stood beside me and told the powers-that-were how stupid they were being and how the entire termination had been a witch hunt because I’d stood up to my bully of a boss. None of the other guys I worked with had the balls to do that.

Ken did.

Subsequently, they also fired Ken because he was unable to conceal his disgust with the treachery that had been displayed in my case. And he let everyone know it. “Ken, they’re going to can you, too, if you don’t rein it in,” I’d told him beforehand.

“Fuck ’em,” was Ken’s reply. “You never should have been fired. It was wrong. They were wrong. And if telling them that costs me my job, then so be it.”

It did cost him his job. But Ken’s resilient spirit never let him regret what he’d done. He simply switched gears and went into plumbing.

As a result of us not working together any longer, Ken and I grew apart. Our schedules never seemed to sync up and while we managed once or twice to get together, it wasn’t anything constant.

I found out earlier this year that Ken had been sick. Real sick. He needed a liver transplant and had been hospitalized for several months. He’d come close to dying a number of times but had managed to fight through it all. He got the transplant, and today, he’s on the mend. As he recovers, he’s keeping busy reading a ton of my stuff and he still proudly proclaims that he’s my number one fan.

He’s also damned inspirational. Not just because he was the source for Zero, but also because Ken never gives up, never quits, and never sold out his friend when loyalty meant the world to me. If ever there was a perfect mold to cast the character of Lawson’s mentor and closest friend, Ken is it.

This one’s for you, Kenny – keep getting well my friend – we’ve still got a lot of journeys ahead of us.

in ebooks / how I write / lawson / life thoughts / novels / publishing / THE FIXER TV series / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Willfully Ignorant

Let’s face it: there are a lot of unintelligent people in this world.

Being ignorant – that is to say, uninformed or lacking knowledge – may have some genetic basis for certain people. Or perhaps they have some mental condition that inhibits learning. They may have a low IQ. In those situations, ignorance can be excused as a preexisting condition not entirely within the control of the ignorant person, who may or may not aspire to improve their situation.

But there’s an epidemic sweeping this country right now of what I like to call willful ignorance. Normal people of average or above-average intelligence actually willfully accepting misinformation and displaying an almost allergic reaction to the notion of using their brain to reason and rationalize.

Example: the other morning I was out to breakfast with my lovely wife. The waitress was down the way talking to other customers about President Obama. The slant of their conversation was decidedly anti-Obama, but the rationale behind it bordered on absurd. The waitress mentioned that the Obamas hadn’t been invited to the Royal wedding and she found it amusing that the British monarchy obviously had such a dim view of the President. Now, rather than actually take five minutes and figure out that the Obamas were not the only heads-of-state that hadn’t been invited, or consider the notion that by attending the wedding they would only be increasing the pressure on an already over-taxed security service, this waitress simply accepted the the first notion that entered her head and used that to buttress her own negative feelings about Obama. In other words, instead of acquiring the correct information, she simply assumed (falsely) a number of things that made her own kneejerk stupidity sound plausible.

Example 2: let’s talk about Obama’s birth certificate. The rallying cry of these same willfully ignorant people has been that Obama wasn’t born in the US. This is so utterly ridiculous on so many levels, it’s fairly comical how stupid this theory is. I mean, really. The President of the United States undergoes a security background check that would leave most people quivering in their boots. Given the unprecedented access the President has to our nation’s most trusted secrets, is it even remotely intelligent to suggest that this guy hasn’t been so thoroughly scrutinized that the birth certificate issue wouldn’t have been addressed years ago?

No, and it’s frankly pretty damned stupid to suggest there’s a conspiracy afoot to bend the rules for one guy to gain access to the highest office in the land. Come on, already. Do any of these birther conspiracy nuts even have one iota of knowledge about what happens during a background investigation? Or how many people are involved in carrying it out? Too many to keep quiet, that’s for damned sure.

But again, rather than use their brain to reason this out, the willfully ignorant choose to ignore common sense and knowledge because doing so would refute their kneejerk subjective opinions about a topic that they feel strongly about.

In Ninjutsu – and likewise in many modern intelligence operations – operatives were taught to be able to objectively report on situations and circumstances. The frontline agents were not expected to form opinions about what they were assigned to uncover. They were simply supposed to report back what they saw. It was then up to the wiser higher-ups to determine what those frontline reports meant and how they might be construed. A lack of objectivity in reporting intelligence leads to faulty assumptions, inaccurate data, and catastrophic repercussions.

As a modern-day student of Ninjutsu, I try to always view things objectively – I gather facts and data and then make up my mind independently about what these things mean to me. Basing a belief system on kneejerk reactionary thought isn’t wise. Nor is it revolutionary.

It is simplemindedness masquerading as zealotry, pseudo-patriotism, and idiocy.

More people than ever before seem willing to put their brain on screensaver mode because it’s too hard to think, or it takes too much time to engage the gray matter. They want their world condensed into tidy sound bites that echo their primal, childlike fears. This makes them feel secure in their beliefs and they’d rather be willfully ignorant than risk being challenged and forced to use the ol’ noggin.

We’ve seen the results of such a mindset. More nutjobs are entering politics than ever before. And they’re winning seats in power because they know that most people simply will not take the time to research them or find out the disturbing truth about them. The willfully ignorant allow themselves to be controlled via their primal reactionary subjectivity. This mindset of willful ignorance is dangerous and more than anything else we’re facing right now, this alone can reduce our great nation to the laughing stock of the global community.

Objective, rational thought is what is desperately needed in the United States of America.

Don’t be willfully ignorant. Don’t be swayed by fear and conspiracy theory and all those other little things that tug at you like the strings on a marionette. Remember: if you really believe you’re intelligent, then you are required to use your brain in an objective manner to fully discover facts and truth before deciding on a conclusion. If all you’re doing is listening to talking heads and regurgitating mindless fear-speak, then you’re not using your brain…

…you’re being controlled.

How does such a thing relate to self-protection? Very easily. If I know, for example, that you’re a rabid anti-Obama Tea Partier, and I have to take you out, I might be inclined to use that to my advantage. If I want you to make the first move, I might suggest that Obama is the greatest thing since sliced bread and infuriate you with my glowing praise of our President. I know that with enough talk, I can get you to flip out and commit to making an attack.

Or maybe, I want to get closer to you. So I take the opposite approach. I rave about what a crook Obama is and how he’s ruining the country. All the while, I subtly draw the distance down between us until I’m in your kill zone. But you don’t see me as a threat because, after all, I’m appealing to your subjective mindset. And before you realize the danger, it’s too late.

And really, it’s just that easy. Those are only two examples of methods I could use on a one-on-one situation to take you out. Can you imagine how many more methods there are for controlling the masses based on appealing to a subjective mindset such as what willful ignorance encourages? Objective, rational thought is the enemy of mass mind control. If you’re truly interested in self-protection, you owe it to yourself to see that ALL of your tools are fully developed – not just the punches, kicks, joint locks, and throws.

Real self-protection begins with your mind. Keep it girded in the armor of objective, rational thought that allows truth to shine through. Willful ignorance is like a rust that undermines the integrity of everything you rely upon for protection.

Don’t compromise your safety.

in common sense / life thoughts / martial arts / self protection / ninjutsu / Uncategorized 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

On Quitting

I recently read a long blog post written by a writer who has been trying for years to achieve some measure of success with his writing. But now he’s calling it quits. I saw the link to the blog on Facebook, along with the person who linked it calling it “interesting and provocative.”

Really?

Since when is quitting interesting? Or even vaguely provocative?

If anything, quitting has become so entirely mainstreamed in our society that the concept of struggling to achieve success – or at the very least struggling to overcome obstacles – is almost universally panned. People quit all the time. “It’s too hard,” they whine. “I was abused by a pack of rabid water buffalo growing up and my psyche is too fragile to deal with challenges.” I know people who change as often as the wind blows. One day they’re rallying behind this cause, the next day another. Today they’re going to be a chef, the next day they’re going to study Sumerian. Today they buy a home in Des Moines, the next day they’re building a tree house in Lima. And all of these people that I know – the ones who view quitting as some sort of solution to dealing with strife, challenge, or obstacles – all have something in common:

They haven’t achieved shit.

Why? Because they lack the ability to set a goal and then channel the necessary energy and drive into a bullet of kinetic energy that blasts through obstacle after obstacle until they achieve what they set out to achieve in the first place. Instead, they drum up any number of excuses – they blame their past, they blame others, they blame factors beyond their control. They cede control of their universe to some unknown variable like “luck” or “it just wasn’t in the cards this time” or some other silliness. Instead of driving their own destiny forward – always inexorably forward with the determination of a juggernaut – they let go of the wheel and they end of spinning in circles wondering why things never work out for them.

The selection process for special operations soldiers is designed to find the men that will simply not stop – not quit – for anything. The guys running the selection process aren’t looking for gazelles who can sprint through the challenges with ease; they’re looking for the guys who fall down, get a face full of mud, dig deep, get back up, keep going, fall down again and again, reach their breaking point, and then dig deeper than they ever knew they were able to dig and come up with the mental and spiritual willpower to absolutely, positively NEVER FREAKIN’ QUIT. THOSE are the people you want coming in to a hijacked plane to rescue you. THOSE are the folks that we can count on to get things done – even in the worst and shittiest possible environments.

Taking charge of your personal destiny is a lot like specops. Life isn’t about being the gazelle, spritzing all over the grasslands, taking a nice nibble here and there and oh, my there’s a lovely little waterhole, hmmm?

It’s about being the hungry lion – always starving for a bite to eat, stalking some sun-parched savannah with your ribs showing through your pelt looking for even the slightest hint of an opportunity and then upon seeing that opportunity, changing it into a goal and feeling that adrenaline drip into your blood as your heart starts pounding and you start breathing faster – knowing that deep down in the very primal heart of your core you will absolutely not stop until you bring down that gazelle and tear into it or you’ll die trying.

That’s the mentality you need to be successful.

Hey, writing’s tough. So is being a neurosurgeon. So is being the number one guy through the door in a hostage situation.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Thankfully, we have this thing called Darwinism. And only the ones that want it bad enough will get to their goals.

Challenge and failure are always present in life. It’s what you do when faced with those challenges and obstacles that determines who you are.

Gazelle.

Lion.

Quitter.

Winner.

You can’t change your past, so why bother wasting time and energy wallowing in it?

Your future is before you.

Make it the one you want it to be.

“Be the ball, Danny. Be the ball…”

in common sense / life thoughts / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

The End of Fabruary

Bunch of stuff to talk about today…

Last week was spent suffering through a nasty bout of the flu. I was down for most of the week (the worst was actually over in about two days, but the lingering effects sucked) and spent all my awake time finishing off my final Rogue Angel novel. I’ve had an absolute blast writing on that series, but after eleven novels, I’m pretty burned out. The folks at Gold Eagle are fantastic to work with and I really enjoyed my time with them.

But I’m excited about things ahead for one big reason: the preceding month has been renamed to “Fabruary.”

Let me explain…

I’ve always viewed the coming ebook revolution with something of a jaded eye. After a decade or more in this business, I’m always wary of supposedly “new” things. But I’ve also been playing around with ebooks for a few years now. I had some early success with it with regards to Parallax and then, after putting out a host of novels, short stories, and a few other things, my sales flatlined at about $100 earnings each month for the last year. That means I was making about a hundred bucks on sales of everything I had out on the Amazon Kindle platform. Not impressive, by any means – especially when I’d read blogs by other folks like Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking (she just bought a house for cash with her ebook earnings), and even some closer friends and colleagues – all of them were enjoying some serious success.

And I wasn’t.

So, I decided to try to remedy that. At the end of January, I put my entire Lawson backlist – four novels, a novella, and four short stories – out on both the Kindle and the Nook platforms. In February, I also debuted a new novella, SLAVE TO LOVE, and then in late February, I reworked the cover of Parallax, dropped its price to 99 cents, and put an excerpt from THE FIXER in the back of it. The goal was to use Parallax as something of a gateway drug to my Lawson series.

The results have been amazing.

Thanks to a series of incredible covers, the Lawson backlist is selling very well, indeed. As of this moment, THE FIXER alone has sold 450 copies on the US Kindle store alone. Priced at $2.99, the novel has earned me $900 and change this month. That’s 100% gorgeous passive income – and it’s 9 times what I made in total for the previous 9 months.

Ah, but I’ve got more than one Lawson novel. I’ve got four. The other three are all selling triple digits. The novellas are closing in on 3 digits and the short stories are selling very well.

So, by itself, the Lawson backlist was generating very strong sales during the shortest month of the year.

Then I dropped the price on Parallax. Until I reworked the cover, I’d sold 4 copies all month. After I dropped the price to 99 cents, I sold many more copies. As of last Friday, I’d sold just over 150 on the Kindle and perhaps 50 on the Nook.

But on Saturday morning, something incredible happened: Barnes & Noble featured Parallax in an email promo to its customers. Nothing elaborate; just a simple shot of some book covers. Parallax was featured in its “thrifty reads & great stories” section. I had no idea this had happened until very late Saturday night. Saturday morning, I saw that Parallax had suddenly sold 55 copies and I thought, “huh, interesting.” I continued to watch the numbers climb all day and into Saturday night. By midnight, it had done 347 copies for the day.

Incredible. My sales rank in the Nook store was beating the likes of JD Robb/Nora Roberts and I was on par with ebook success Amanda Hocking. I had no way of knowing if the trend would last, but yesterday, I sold 233 copies.

Staggering.

I have no idea if the Parallax burst will last, but I’m thrilled to have gotten such an amazing push. I’ve sold 25 copies this morning. You can still get it for the Nook HERE and on the Kindle HERE for just 99 cents. It’s a great book, one of my best.

So, with all that said, I’m very excited. The ebook revolution means that I have the freedom to write whatever I want and get it out there as soon as it’s ready for mass consumption. No longer do I have to slave over a proposal and hope that an editor in New York understands the scope of the project, gets excited, can then pitch it to a room full of supposed experts, gets the green light to acquire it, makes a decent offer (lol), and then tells me the book will be out in about a year. Now, if I have an idea I think is cool, I can just write the thing and put it out. If it flops, no biggie. If it’s a hit – all the better. But the amount of time and number of hoops to jump through for me to reach my readers has now been drastically winnowed.

After all, it’s always been about the readers. Or rather, it should have always been about the readers. That hasn’t always been the case with the traditional publishing model.

But now, it can be.

Am I through with traditional publishing? Probably not. But I will say this: my attitude has been changed tremendously given the success I’ve had in the shortest month of the year. I have big plans to get a lot more material out for ereaders – more Lawson, new series, fun stuff – a veritable ton of things that have only been ideas and “failed” proposals until now. (I say “failed” only because they didn’t sell in the traditional publishing world.)

The landscape is changing. Dramatically.

Borders has gone bankrupt. Is B&N going that way, too? Probably not since they adopted an ebook strategy. But the thing about ebooks is this: they’re not going to stop. And more people will get an e-reader. I love the feel of traditional books, but even I have been reading some things on my iPhone lately. We’re either at a tipping point or beyond it now. Millions are reading ebooks and millions more will soon join them.

Traditional publishers need to seriously revamp their contracts. Right now, the industry standard is 25% net on ebook sales.

That’s crap.

And as much as they may insist that costs are high for producing an ebook, it’s a bogus argument. I can put an ebook out on the Kindle and it takes me perhaps thirty minutes to do. Same for the Nook. I can hire someone to design a great cover.

So why would I give a publisher more than 50% of the proceeds from ebook sales?

For me personally, there’s a lot to think about in the coming months. Where do I want my career to go? With THE FIXER TV series moving ahead, do I want my books tied up by a traditional publisher that doesn’t pay me a fair rate?

Before the ebook revolution, the folks in New York (by and large) determined the destinies of writers.

Since the ebook revolution, that power has shifted. On a seismic scale. Writers now control their destinies. We can write what we want and sell it to our readers. Fewer middlemen means a lot of very good things, indeed.

I’m excited.

For the month of Fabruary, I just broke $3,000 in earnings for my ebooks. 30 times what I’d earned each month for the previous year. (and frankly, there are many writers making a LOT more than that right now, so my potential for sales isn’t going to go down, it’s going to go up as I a) produce more material, b) the number of folks reading ebooks climbs, and c) the number of e-readers sold climbs…)

That kind of success can make a person stop and think.

And it should.

So, while I do that, here’s a new review of THE KENSEI and a fun little Q&A with Talya. Enjoy!

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / film/TV / how I write / lawson / life thoughts / Ninja series / ninjutsu / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / short stories / THE FIXER TV series / Uncategorized / vampires / website / writing 0 comments