Hello World

Based on my extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that I need to have an author's website and blog, so here it is.  

HELLO WORLD, it's me!

My name is Anson Joaquin, and I'm a writer, among other things. For purposes of this website, though, that's the important part - I'm a writer and I've finished two books that I will be bringing to market soon, and I am working on a third and have plans for the rest of my current series and another one after that.  I will probably be able to spare you any poetry, but no guarantees.

If you've somehow stumbled upon this blog post, you may be wondering if you would like my writing, or else you are related to me.  Well, even if you are related to me, you're probably still wondering if you would like what I've written.  So I'll try to answer that by telling you about what I like and you'll just have to trust that I can reflect myself and my own likes adequately in my writing.  That seems like a given, but I imagine it's harder than one would think, either because some writers may not be good at it, or else the impacts of outside editing and/or the pressures of trying to fit one's work into its various "it needs to do this" shapes and categories.  That is, it needs to adhere to a specific external dogma, viewpoint, or cause*, or just to sell better to the public or even to the publishing industry.

* Which is probably why most Christian rock, corporate jingles, and non-copyrighted birthday songs aren't great music, though in my personal opinion there are a lot of great protest songs that seem to be an exception to that rule, from Dylan to Rage Against the Machine.

Oh good, I finally got around to saying something about what I like.  I should do more of that.  But first, I will say that if you find this disjointed and poorly written, never fear - I have editors who don't let me get away with writing like this in my books.  This blog is more like free time at school.

So back to my likes:

I like fantasy because that's how my mom taught me to read - with her finger following along the prose of Tolkien, Lewis, and Terry Brooks every night at bedtime (once I'd graduated from Grover's There's a Monster at the End of this Book, anyway).  One night, I just realized I was reading along with the words with her, and I have basically never stopped reading fantasy since then.  

I like science fiction because at a far-too-young age I discovered a Robert Heinlein book for 25 cents at a school book fair.  The whole thing blew me away - I'd never before experienced anything so interesting, inspiring, educational, and clearly intended for adults only.  Science fiction is a playground for ideas about how things in the future might be, and what the impact of those ideas on real people might be. As author Frederick Pohl said, "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam."  Also, Heinlein espoused a strong traditionalist view of what it was to be a good man and a contributing member of society, and it meant something to me, though it was somehow paired in his books with some extremely non-traditional views on sexual mores.  Here, I will acknowledge that there are some pretty big problems with Heinlein and his writing, though I was blind or at least naive to those at the time.

I like horror because it feels primal, visceral, and real, like the fear of an amusement park free-fall ride - you know it's not logically dangerous (almost ever), but the fear itself is real, and it makes it easy to imagine and even start to experience how some extremely unlikely scary situation would feel.  That's power!  As children, we're coddled for safety and convenience and so now the occasional fright is a bracing plunge into a very different mindset.  I had a very active imagination as a child and after watching American Werewolf in London sometime around age 6, I was afraid of the dark until I was thirteen years old.  I cured it by getting so wrapped up in Stephen King's It that I couldn't put it down, though I felt I could literally see Pennywise the clown pressing his face against my bedroom window out of the corner of my eye as I read late into the night.

I like comedy because it's incredibly important and powerful.  Comedian Victor Borge said, “Laughter is the shortest distance between two people”, and Dickens held that, “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”  Maybe he spelled it humour though. Comedy is a lasting connection that forges instantly and holds up a mirror to yourself, your ideals, and to life itself - and the mirror manages to be both critical and forgiving at the same time.  It's cathartic, and it's proven to be good for you, at least if you actually laugh and aren't one who says, "That's funny!" instead of laughing.  

I have tried to fit all of those (plus a little philosophy and other stuff) into my books.  Please tell me, hopefully via 5-star reviews on your shoppe of choice, whether or not I succeeded!