A real stretch

When I was in middle school in the early 1970s (we called it junior high), I was a fast runner. I weighed about 80 pounds, and I could run so fast I almost disappeared. Okay, so I almost disappeared even when I wasn't running.

Anyway, in eighth grade, over the course of about two weeks I blew out both my hamstrings while running the junior high version of track. Back then, there was no such thing as MRI's. If you hurt yourself, you limped around for awhile until it healed. In my case, it healed fine -- except for one annoying problem. My hamstrings seemed to shorten, which severely reduced my flexibility. Since then, I have not been able to touch my toes with my knees locked, and it is uncomfortable for me to sit on the floor for any length of time. The lotus position? Forget it. Frequent lower back pain? Yes, dammit. Does stretching help? Not as much as it should.

Am I capable of doing a split? Don't make me laugh. If you ever found me in a split position, I would also have to be dead.

However ...................... my youngest daughter, Lia (above), is sort of the anti-Jim Melvin, at least in terms of flexibility. When I lie on my back, lock my right knee, and raise my leg, I can barely achieve a perpendicular position. Lia, on the other hand, can bend her leg back so far that she could easily kiss her own toes. In fact, she could kiss her own heel. Or calf.

Lia can do a split as easily as I can cross my fingers. She also, in a very short time, has become an extremely good gymnast. In fact, at 8 years old, she is better as a gymnast than I have been at any sport in my life. She can do flips and twist and leaps and jumps that would cause an ordinary mortal to scream in terror.

But there's one problem: the judging. No matter how well she does, how magnificently she performs, the judges seem to give her scores that are lower than I believe she deserves.

Am I just being the overly proud parent?

Or maybe it's just that my hamstrings are short-sighted.

A bestseller on the horizon

No, not my series ... at least not yet. But a dear friend of mine has a book debuting in February that has bestseller written all over it.

Nationally recognized sportswriter Dave Scheiber of the St. Petersburg Times (where I also worked for 25 years) has co-written a book with NBA referee Bob Delaney called Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob. Delaney is a force of nature, and when he enters a room, all eyes turn. He also is a dynamic and polished public speaker. The book will debut on Feb. 1 and is being published by Union Square Press, an imprint of Sterling (which is owned by Barnes and Noble). Needless to say, it should debut high on the nonfiction list and is likely to be headed soon to the big screen.

Here's the description that runs on Amazon.

Book Description

In a riveting page-turner, NBA referee Bob Delaney reveals the clandestine life he led before becoming one of professional basketball’s most respected referees.

In 1975, Delaney had spent only a year and a half as a New Jersey State Trooper when his superiors approached him with a tantalizing yet dangerous undercover assignment: to infiltrate the Mob. Delaney accepted, and became Bobby Covert, the president of Alamo Trucking, a fully-operational business used by law enforcement as flypaper for snagging crooks.

At the height of The Godfather era, Delaney wore a wire and lived among wiseguys who modeled themselves on their on-screen counterparts, quoting lines from “The Movie” and boasting of how often they’d seen it. Delaney even crossed paths with Joe Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco (though neither knew the other was undercover), knowing all the while that a single slip could get him killed.

Ultimately gathering enough evidence to convict 30 members of the Bruno and Genovese crime families, Project Alpha was a success, but Delaney struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and traces of Stockholm syndrome after getting too close to those he investigated. Therapy helped him come to terms with all he’d endured during his three tense years undercover, and, once a college basketball star, Delaney began officiating high school and intramural games as a way to rebuild his life—eventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades.

This is his amazing true story, with a foreword by NBA great and current TV commentator Bill Walton.

My agent, Uwe Stender, represents this book, and Dave mentions me and The Death Wizard Chronicles in the acknowledgements. So, my series will be a bestseller -- at least in that regard!

I've known Dave for more than 30 years, and he is one of the greatest people I have ever met. There is no nicer or more deserving guy on the planet. I wish him the best of luck.

But in this case, Dave doesn't need it. Thanks to Bob Delaney's amazing life and Dave Scheiber's amazing abilities as a writer, Covert is a lock.

Covert, Bob Delaney, Dave Scheiber, blogosphere, Death Wizard, Jim Melvin,

Another keeper review for The DW Chronicles!

Here's another great review for The Pit, this one by Jaime McDougall that appeared on The Book Stacks.

The Death Wizard Chronicles
Book One: The Pit

Only a Death-Knower can die
And live again.
Only a Death-Knower can return from death.
And remember.
Only a Death-Knower can tell us what he has seen.
Not all care to listen.

While war approaches under the direction of the sorcerer Invictus, threatening to completely destroy the peace Triken has known for centuries, Death-Knower wizard Torg is trapped in a pit that is a hell like no other.

Though no ordinary human could survive more than a few hours in the pit, Torg lives on…

Jim Melvin proves himself to be a master storyteller, putting his characters through the worst imaginable hells and showing no mercy. He keeps you turning pages, the reader wondering what the characters could possibly be put through next.

The Pit, the first book of The Death Wizard Chronicles, is an action-packed tale taking place on vibrant three-dimensional world. Triken is a world rich with intricate relationships and a full history on which Melvin has built the lives of many races.

Triken truly comes alive for the reader and is filled with mysteries and places that even the most powerful characters in the book are unaware of. That gives the reader the opportunity to discover and learn with the characters, which makes them easier to identify with.

Melvin has added to the texture of the world by integrating eastern philosophies, giving the magic used not only consistency but depth. He has worked out the details of his magic system so readers can understand where it comes from and how it works.

As a story, The Pit is rich and full; as a book it is addictive and quite an excellent addition to the adult fantasy book shelf. And it is distinctly "adult" fantasy – the scene that redefines "all-consuming orgasm" is enough to lift this from a level suitable for children.

I definitely recommend this book. As the author himself has said, reading this book will make you decide if The Death Wizard Chronicles are for you.

They are for me. All in all, an excellent package

-- Jaime McDougall, thebookstacks.com.

epic fantasy, The Book Stacks, FictionScribe, blogosphere, sexy R-rated, Fear of death, Death Wizard

Warming up to sex

Hmmmm ... now I'm rethinking the sex thing. I only got 26 hits the first day, but I got 80 hits the second. Maybe it just takes sex a couple of days to get cranked up.

epic fantasy, sexy R-rated, Fear of death, Death Wizard, sex, wild sex, kinky sex

Death Wizard on the Book Connection

Today, The Death Wizard Chronicles is featured on a popular and highly regarded blog: the Book Connection. Please check it out here. There are synopses, excerpts and personal reflections.

A roar for powerful words

I've been tagged by Mary "Lynn" Lewis of the Virtual Wordsmith and been presented with the Roar for Powerful Words award. Now it's your turn. The rules follow:

* Link back to the person who tagged you.

* List three things that you believe are necessary to make writing good and powerful.

* Tag five others and comment on their blog informing them that they've been tagged with this award:

1) Do things on purpose: Though the subconscious mind plays a large role in the writing process, it's still imperative to know your themes in advance, and to then use literary devices such as symbolism, metaphor, allegory, dramatic irony, and foreshadowing to back these themes up.

2) Write what pleases you, not what you think will please the reader: Psychologists say this all the time: It's impossible to love anyone, if you don't first love yourself. The same goes for writing. If you try to write for the reader, most often you'll fail. But if you write for yourself -- with passion, honesty, and courage -- the reader will be more likely to enjoy your work.

3) Pull no punches: We all have limits as to what we can tolerate, in terms of joy, sorrow, pleasure and pain. As a writer, you need to push yourselves to your limits -- and beyond.

The five people I choose to carry this on are:

Chris at Alpha Adventures.

Terrie at Kappa no He.

Judy at Welcome to My World of Dreams.

Michael at Avatar Lore.

Jaime at Fiction Scribe.

Note: the image of the lion above can be found here, saved as a jpeg, and uploaded.

Sex experiment fails

Well, my experiment of putting the word sex in the title, body copy, and tags of a blog item to see if it would significantly increase my hits turned out to have little effect. I've been averaging about 25-30 hits per day, and over the 24-hour period since I wrote the sex item, I got 26 hits. Hmmm. Maybe if I admit that I'm a big fan of Hillary Clinton (true, I am), then I'll get more hits -- positive and negative.

epic fantasy, sexy R-rated, Fear of death, Death Wizard, Hillary Clinton