Jax Book Nook

Like many people who started writing after COVID, my experience in reading ill-prepared me for publication. What I mean is that when I read for pleasure in the past, I read a lot of books that are, as you say, old. Well, old in that they weren’t written this Millenium. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Confederacy of Dunces, old-school Stephen King, and above all, J.R.R. Tolkien. I grew up reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, though I didn’t get to the Silmarillion until I was a young adult. Some books are meant to be read over a lifetime.

I bring this up because I am currently watching the Rings of Power. It’s been subject to all kinds of complaints. Some of these center around the race of the actors, which I find less racist and more pedantic. No, there probably weren’t black people in prehistoric Europe. Shakespeare had no black actors to play Othello. He just told the crowd that Othello was a moor and expected them to use their imaginations. I wonder if some of those people did stomp out in protest, and no doubt their descendants are the people now bitching and moaning about black elves.

A better point being made is that the Rings of Power isn’t true to Tolkien because it gets the events of Tolkien’s world out of order. The show takes the timeline of Tolkien’s world and condenses it. Galadriel was a warrior…in the First Age. The Ring was forged in the first half of the second age. Numenor fell in the second half of the second age. Gandalf and the Balrog both appear, despite the fact that in Tolkien’s time line, neither show up until the Third Age.

However, it is unlikely that Tolkien’s work would ever be translated to the screen as he intended. That’s because his type of writing doesn’t map onto our modern idea of good storytelling. It includes unnecessary characters like Glorfindel and Tom Bombadil, employs an omniscient viewpoint, and involves long bits of exposition. Tolkien cared very little about the golden rule of modern writing “show, don’t tell” as he spent hundreds of pages telling us about the history of Middle Earth in the back of the Return of the King.

However, I wonder if this means that Tolkien was a bad writer (unlikely) or if our ideas of what constitutes good writing are deficient (more likely). In any event, it is unlikely we will ever see Tolkien’s vision on screen. And I think maybe he would prefer it that way. Tolkien was pretty reticent to allow his movies to be adapted. Something will inevitably get lost in translation.

Hello, this is Jack Willems of Charleston, West Virginia. I am a new writer who just published his first novella: Beer Run, with Solstice Publishing. It is currently in the editing phase. =http://www.SolsticePublishing.com

I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1986 to a middle-class family.  I lived in Searcy, Arkansas as a kid until I went to a boarding school run by Benedictine Monks for high school After high school, I attended the University of Arkansas on a full scholarship, graduating at the top of my class.  I then attended Harvard Law School, serving as an editor for the Journal of Law and Public Policy, publishing a case review. I then came back to Arkansas, and after a short stint as a law clerk for the Arkansas Supreme Court, I have worked as an attorney ever since.  My job has forced me to move a few times, and I am currently living in Charleston, West Virginia, working as an attorney primarily in litigation and real estate. 

            I met my wife Rachel while I was still practicing in Arkansas.  She was getting her Masters in Music at the University of Memphis on the other side of the state.  We met online and hit it off immediately. We drove five hours each weekend to see each other. We married in October 2015, and we had our first child, Francis Timothy Willems, February 2021.  I have two brothers, one who still lives in Arkansas and another who lives in New York City. 

            Since I started writing I have been published twice. I published a short story called Identical to the Real Thing in Synthetic Reality Magazine. I also published A Probing Interview in Literally stories. I am now in the process of publishing my novella, Beer Run.

I started writing at the beginning of the pandemic.  I think a lot of people did, but I wanted to write as a way to deal with some negative life experiences that I had, particularly in the workplace.  My wife wanted me to start writing again because she could tell I was having some problems coping. 

Beer Run takes place in the year 2538 in the Democratic Union of Planets. While many promising young men aspire to join the Intergalactic Navy and explore the universe, Bill Stiltson, son of the inventor of the artificially intelligent android, just wants to run a microbrewery on the moon. This is why he illegally buys an abandoned android, whom he dubs Cassandra, and covertly puts her to work behind the bar. However, Bill is thrown into a mystery when his old commander flies his ship into the sun, killing everyone on board, and Bill becomes a part of the investigation. Bill and Cassandra, along with Bill’s adopted android brother, Isaac, get drawn into a Luddite conspiracy.

Right now. I working on getting Beer Run published. I may have excerpts of it later. I may have other writing. Right now, I’m just finishing up my first post.

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