J.E. Jack's Blog

Six years ago, I took a motorcycle trip from northern Indiana to southern Illinois on a small 250cc motorcycle. It was a hard tail, and I only took the back roads. I felt every bump those roads had. I was just about a few short months shy of forty then, but it’s amazing how a body changes in a relatively short amount of time. It’s also amazing how much life happens and changes over the same course of time. Fast forward to now, I took another motorcycle trip, but this time, I took my dad’s trike from New Orleans to southern Illinois. Again, this time only using back roads.

Why southern Illinois? Well, it’s a place that still holds magic for me. A place of solace and a place to recharge. That and the best darn homemade buttermilk biscuits and gravy a person can get anywhere, though in the past few years, those homemade buttermilk biscuits have transitioned to Mary B’s biscuits that can be found in the frozen section of most supermarkets. So, now, after all this time, it really wasn’t about the biscuits but the company that came with the breakfast, which was my aunt and uncle. It’s an interesting phenomenon how the company can make food taste better or worse depending on the company.

Also, it’s the time for a family reunion that I like to attend as much as I can. It’s been going on every year for as long as I can remember, though there were a couple of periods of time when the show did not go on, but thankfully, it’s happened more than not. But even as I write this, I know the curtains will close and the show will be over a lot sooner than I’d like.
My mom was the last of thirteen children and surprisingly, I am not the youngest of the 30 something first cousins. That honor goes to someone else.

One day, I plan on writing a heavily fictionalized book that loosely follows a family very similar, but that’s a story for another time and not today.

Today’s story is about my trip. My dad passed away last year, and I bought his trike. It’s been a tough time this past year for various reasons, and I wanted to use the trip to sort of reconnect with my thoughts about him.

Over the years, I have come to the realization that I am a hopeless romantic mixed with a good portion of delusion of grandeur. I love the idea of something more so than the reality and that, coupled with destination disease, leads to interesting decisions. I wouldn’t recommend it but at the same time, I am thankful because I’ve been able to do a lot of interesting things over the time I have had on this earth.

It’s also an interesting concept of how young men try to be like their dad, even when it’s not a good fit. I remember when I was in Afghanistan as a government contractor. Another one of those hopeless romantic decisions that found me in places that surprise me. I bought a 69 mustang because that’s what my dad had. I didn’t know the first thing about old cars or even really how to work on one, but since my dad had one, well, I’m going to have one too. Funny thing happened when I got back from the Stan. My dad sold his mustang! And mine became a garage ornament for over a decade because there was something wrong with the engine and I just didn’t have the knowledge or really the interest in fixing it. Kind of like grabbing a wolf by the ears. Can’t hang on but can’t let go either. I also bought a motorcycle because my dad had one.

It seems that I’ve had this problem for years. I remember my first year in college after I got out of the Marine Corps; I had just enough money to buy a vehicle, and what did I do? I bought a stupid motorcycle that became my only mode of transportation. I learned something that year. Don’t ever buy a motorcycle as your only mode of transportation. It’s kind of miserable on hot days and during storms, not to mention doesn’t go over very well trying to go on a date.
So, again, I when I got back from the Stan, I upgraded my motorcycle to a Harley. I’ve also come to the realization that I am not a biker like my dad and that motorcycle is yet another garage ornament. Yeah, I don’t mind getting my head in the wind every once in a while, but I am not a diehard. To be honest, I am not a diehard anything.

So why did I buy my dad’s trike? I don’t know. It’s another wolf’s ear grab, but it’s been in the garage for a bit, and I made the decision that I am going to take that trike and ride it to southern Illinois.

I’m also the kind of guy that when I make a decision about something, come hell or high water, I am going to follow through on it. I read reports of rain all weekend the weekend of the trip and though I know it’s miserable to ride in the rain, I already made the decision.

I took off on a Friday morning at 5 a.m. and although New Orleans is known for bad traffic and even worse drivers, there’s not that many on the road at that time in the morning. I zipped through the city and headed north over lake Pontchartrain. There were dark clouds all around, but as I crossed that twenty-four-mile bridge, the sun rose to the east, and I saw a couple of holes in the cloud coverage. It reminded me of how we are all on different journeys, but there are certain truths that will always shine behind the cloud cover and every once in a while, we catch a glimpse of that truth.

From Pontchartrain, I drove through Covington and ended up skirting the east Louisiana Mississippi border. There is a very small blip of a town called Angie right before one heads into Mississippi. I have seen this town on the map for a few years now and was always curious about. It seems to be miles from nowhere and yet it exists. Riding through was not a disappointment, though it was very small. It had a nice downtown to it, but unfortunately, most of the buildings were shuttered with plywood in the windows. I could only imagine what it looked like back in its heyday. I had little time to dwell on it because I had places to go and couldn’t stick around.

I ended up stopping in a small town called Foxworth. At this point, I was on the road for a couple of hours and needed to stretch my legs. Now, the thing about my dad’s trike, I’ve come to learn that it’s temperamental. Sometimes, it is really hard to get into neutral and other times, if it’s not in neutral, it won’t start. So, when I was ready to go again, I tried the ignition button and nothing and as much as I tried to get into neutral, it just wasn’t having it. I was beginning to wonder if this would be the trip and I would have to figure out how to get home with a trike that doesn’t want to start. I rocked the strike back and forth and eventually I was able to get it into neutral and only then was I able to start it back up. Then back on the road, I went heading north.

A little while later, I stopped for gas in Mt. Olive, Mississippi. From there, I headed on, but I turned on a podcast and listened to an episode of the Shawn Ryan Show. This particular episode, which was about four hours, was an interview with John Burke, a pastor who documents and studies near-death experiences. I found the conversation to be very thought provoking. I think the thing I found to be most interesting were the reports of perfect understanding and life reviews. In some instances, God gave people the choice of a life review, in others, he didn’t. Also, some experienced a whole life review and others only experienced certain moments. In those life reviews, some claimed they viewed their whole life again, and that time worked very differently on the other side. Also, not only did they re-experience the thoughts and feelings they felt in those moments, but this time, they experienced the thoughts and feelings other people had in those moments. I found this to be intriguing because how awesome would that be to fully understand what someone was going through as they were talking to you or how your actions affected them. We are taught to do unto others as we would have done to ourselves. I think this is true because one day, we will see exactly how closely we followed this. So many times in my life, I can see how miscommunication, or the misreading of a situation, ended badly. Anyway, like I said, it was a thought-provoking topic.

At some point in Mississippi, I ended up on the Natchez Trace Parkway for about 120 or so miles. That was an absolutely beautiful drive. It’s a two-lane road that’s pristine. No traffic lights or stop signs, just straight driving through beautiful country. I had to stop near Tupelo to refill the gas tank before continuing on. The weather had been overcast all day and remained so until I got past Tennessee. I had been fortunate because with all the reports of rain; I had missed most of them so I never got rained on but there were plenty of indication that the storms just came through with wet roads.

Speaking of gas tanks and gas stations. I drove through Tennessee with no problems, but right before I got to the Kentucky state line, I noticed I had less than a quarter of a tank, but I was confident that I would find something. As I traveled, the dashboard lit up and told me I had low gas. Okay, no big deal. I will find the next gas station, except there were none. Now my trike was telling me I had 14 miles left to go before I would start walking and I began to worry. I had been on the road a while and there was nothing and I was in the middle of nowhere. I searched for the nearest gas station, and it was 13 miles away in Sedalia, Kentucky. I barely made it and I’ve never been so thankful to see a hole in the wall gas station.

From there, feeling much better about the gas station, I headed north through Paducah, Kentucky and across the Ohio River over a blue two-lane bridge and I was grateful that I was on a trike instead of a two wheeled motorcycle because the bridge was nothing but grated segments. On a two wheeled motorcycle, at least in my experience, the grooves of the grate kind of throw you around and you have to be careful.

I was finally in Illinois. There is something about the land of southern Illinois that speaks to me. The various shades of green in the trees and the long view of farms across the land offer me a place of solace, and as I’ve said before, a place of magic. I think that’s why most of my books are set there.

After another thirty to forty minutes, I pulled into the front yard of my aunt’s home. I saw another car there and thought little of it, as I just thought that maybe it was a neighbor stopping by. But to be honest, I probably wasn’t thinking clearly. It was almost 6 pm, and I had been on the road for almost thirteen hours.

As soon as I turned off the trike, the front door opened, and my eyes played tricks on me. I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a figure that looked like my brother stepping onto the front porch, but that couldn’t have been it because he was supposed to be in Arizona. As my mind wrestled with this, I’m sure I had a dumbfounded look on my face. Sure enough, that figure was my brother, and he drove two days to surprise me, which he did. I didn’t suspect a thing, though he thought I had figured it out, but I hadn’t. I had called him the day before and he told me he was driving, but he didn’t let on that he was driving to Illinois.

I have to admit; I was so glad to see him. Not because of just seeing him, but he had his car and after the grueling day I just had, I realized I wouldn’t have to ride everywhere on the trike and that was a relief, of course, it was a minor thought in comparison, but it was there. Something I didn’t realize on a trip like that with a trike versus a motorcycle. On a motorcycle, you put your feet down to balance when you come to a stop, so you get to stretch your legs a little. On a trike, you don’t have to and yes, you can stick your leg out to stretch a little while riding, but it isn’t the same. Being in one sitting position for so long caused my knees and leg muscles to hurt.
I slept wonderfully that evening.

Now, usually, the family reunion is on Sunday afternoon before Memorial Day, but with the weather forecast predicting horrible weather all day, it was moved to Saturday instead. The location of the reunion has changed throughout the years but more times than not, it’s usually hosted by one of my uncles who has a farm and a house that sits near a picturesque small lake. I remember one of the first times we had it out there; I was maybe sixteen, and I had just delved into civil war reenacting the previous year, and I was so excited to show off the new uniform to everyone.

Before we arrived at the reunion, my brother and I decided to drive around southern Illinois a little. I think every time I go, there are a few things I have to do. I have to drive through Stonefort, which incidentally I renamed Stonemill in my book, The Hermit. I have to drive through Marion. And last but not least, I have to drive through Pittsburg, which was the setting for my first novel, Them Bones. I also have to visit the small cemetery near my aunt’s house in Stonefort. Don’t ask me why. It’s hard to pinpoint when tradition starts. Most of you reading this probably have no idea about these locations, but I did a lot of growing up in those small villages/towns. I guess you can say that’s where my foundation really started.

We did a quick drive through Stonefort and then headed to Pittsburg. Now, we weren’t looking for anything, but life sometimes has a way of things to look for you. We were minding our own business, driving slowly in front of the yard that used to house my grandmother’s house in Pittsburg. It’s long gone now and the patch of green grass that remains makes no mention of what was once there. In fact, it’s hard to believe a house of any size once stood on that corner lot.

As we were about to leave, my brother was driving, and we both looked forward to see a middle-aged man without shirt or shoes emerge from a trailer just ahead on the left. He had tattoos covering his upper body. This man comes to the middle of the street and stands in front of our car and advances. He is trying his best to appear intimidating.

Now, my brother is a former marine and wearing a ball cap that pretty much states this. I am a former marine, current law enforcement officer, so I nonchalantly rested my hand on the butt of my sidearm and waited to see what this guy would do. He comes up to the driver’s window and my brother rolls it down. This guy asks, “Are you looking for something?”

We both reply with no emotion, almost deadpan, “no.”

The guy then tries to play the staring game and we just stare back.

The whole time we this process played out, the only thought in my head was… crap, I am going to have to shoot this guy today and it would delay us getting to the reunion.

The man, I think sensing that we didn’t give a flying feces, turned around and walked away, and says as he was moving away, “Better go and find it then.”

Which made no sense. As we drove by, I think I saw a baggy of something in his hand, so I am pretty sure he thought we were there to buy drugs, but the whole thing just made me mad. Here we were trying to reminisce about the innocence of our childhood, only to have it destroyed by this jerk with no shirt on.

We then drove through the rest of Pittsburg, which didn’t take long, but we stopped long enough to admire the stonework of our grandfather and uncle outside the community center before leaving.

We also made a few errands in Marion and then on into the country to catch up with family. Now my uncle with the farm lives out in the country and I mean it. The country. But it’s beautiful and worth the drive.

We arrived and saw the others that showed up. Unfortunately, due to the years and just how things go, we only had maybe forty people show up, but in times past, it wasn’t unheard of to pull close to a hundred people. And honestly, as we all get older and in a few years (hopefully not anytime soon) as the remaining aunts and uncles go to the great beyond, I’m not sure how many more reunions there will be. I’d give anything to have one more big one where everyone makes the effort. Will that happen? I don’t know. My brother and I were discussing this at some point. When we were born into this family, it felt like it could do no wrong, but as we’ve gotten older, we can see where the cracks developed and grow. Just one of those things and at the end of the day, even with those faults or issues, or miscommunications, we are so blessed to be a part of it all and one day, it will be just a memory until that too is gone. It’s sad, those we care about most in life, we will only see a handful of times more, if we only see them once a year.
It was a great time with those that were there and as things happen at these kinds of events; I stuffed myself full of great food. Someone made a concoction of banana cheesecake pudding and that was fantastic, but all of it was fantastic.

Every time I go, I task myself with taking the family photo, which kind of stresses me out. Trying to herd that many people to take a picture when you have kids on the other side of the lake and people eating here and there, I can never really relax until that photo is taken but I am glad that I do because I think one day it’s going to matter. Someone’s grandkid or great grandkid would like to know what we looked like.

Task complete, I could relax. Had some good conversations and then people drifted away one by one, heading home. My brother and I were among the last to leave, along with one of my cousins named Kyle, and thankfully he did because my brother’s battery had died and no jumping would save it. He had been having some problems with it, but now it required a whole new battery. Kyle was gracious enough to cart us around to get a battery and cart us back. Once we dropped the battery in, the car fired right up. We didn’t get back to my aunt’s house near Stonefort till late due to this. Overall, though, it was a good day.

Now, the next day, Sunday. A strong thunderstorm came through in the morning and by noon, the sun was out. My brother and I went for another drive. While we were out, the weather was so nice that it seemed that no other storms should come, kind of like hurricane eyes. It was a calm and beautiful day. We didn’t stay out too long and returned back to the house and by evening; the storms were back, and holy smokes was it a storm. A huge line rolled through and spun up four tornadoes in different areas. We took shelter in a village near Stonefort near my aunt’s husband’s sister’s home. Two of those tornadoes passed nearby, one just to the north and one just to the south. We were very fortunate.

The next day, it was time for my brother and I to make the trek home, but not before an aunt on my dad’s side reached out to see if we had time to meet up and thankfully we did. I honestly don’t know that side of the family all that well, so it was nice to catch up with her, her husband and a step uncle and his wife that I don’t think I’ve ever met before.

On the way home, I stayed on the interstate and cut my travel time down to nine and a half hours instead of twelve or thirteen hours. I think trikes are made for interstate driving and not so much back roads because the trip wasn’t that bad coming back.

It was a good and quick trip. I am glad to be home and sit here as I write this. Did I come to some great understanding about my dad on this trip? No. I am still just as lost on that subject as I was when I began, but I did come to learn how great it is to be intentional in life and let those you care about know that you care.

I am currently handwriting this
on my tablet to see how good it is at converting text. I've also read how writing in longhand can be a different experience from typing a story. Long gone is the callous on my second finger that l had when I was a kid.

The memories of being a kid. It was a lonely one for the most part until I made it to high school. Before then, my mom and I lived in a double wide on the side of a busy road. I didn't live in neighborhood full of kids. There was one girl who lived down the street l knew in the years that I lived at the location from third to eighth grade. We didn't hang out a whole lot but every once in a while, when I was accidentally locked out of my house and had to wait for my mom to get home from work, I would walk down there and her family would let me hang on till my mom came home.

I was a latchkey kid and spent a lot of time alone or in my books. And when I say my books, I don't mean the ones for school. I was too much of a daydreamer to pay attention in class and so it didn't come as a surprise when those remarks of "needs to pay attention in class” showed up in my report card. My conduct was always marked well though. My parents instilled in me from a very young age the importance of manners but I did tend to talk a little too much sometimes. I was an awkward kid and lived in the extremes of loneliness the was countered by me talking in class. It wasn't a good combination but thankfully, I never got into too much trouble.

The books I meant were the ones that come from a trip to the bookstore or my favorite, the scholastic book fair. The excitement of bringing home the five or six pages of book descriptions along with the order form are some of my most treasured memories. I didn't come from a family of money. It was a single parent home and although my dad paid child support, we weren't living high on the hog. But she always made sure that I could get a book or two.

Outside of the books, there wasn't much else to do but looking back, l'm grateful because I think that's where I developed my imagination and honed the ability to amuse myself.

Verdict: the remarkable 2 was able to convert about 80 to 90% of my penmanship to text and that's pretty amazing.

Hello everyone! It has been harder to get back to the story, more so than I thought it would have. It's one thing to write daily and you know more or less what's going on in the story, but when you get sick or take an unexpected break, it's like coming back to a blank page. Or even worse,, a story that you are unsure of because you don't exactly remember what happened last time you wrote.

Good news though, I have spent the last few days doing what I usually tell people not to do until they finish the first draft, going back through the story to get the feel and establish/fix plot holes. I have now come to understand that sometimes this is needed as break glass in case of emergency to get back into it for a pantser like me.

One year ago, I published my third novel and I haven't published since. It's been a rough year. I have written since but not really published anything due to life and the challenges we all get from time to time that get in the way. But rest assured, I am not done. I already have an idea for my next book, and then after that one, maybe work on book two of the current book I am writing depending how well it does.

Anyhoo. Just wanted to touch base with you all. I hope you are well.

Hello everyone!

I hope this finds you all well. I wanted to give you an update on my current project. If you read my first three novels, you know that what I have published so far has been slight supernatural thrillers. This current work will be a slight divergence from those. It is an urban fantasy set in New Orleans, with the protagonist being a New Orleans Police Department Detective who happens to be a werewolf. I’m currently almost to 80k words in the project and I think I am getting close to being finished with the first draft.

Unfortunately, I probably would have finished already if I hadn’t gotten sick a couple of weeks ago. It kind of threw me off and to be honest, it’s been hard to get back to my writing routine, but these things happen but have no fear, I will finish this story.

It’s been a while since I’ve published a book and I am looking forward to getting this out there. It’s not for a lack of work. In the past year, I wrote two other stories, a novella and another novel set in a fantasy setting, but I haven’t done anything with those as far as publishing them… well that’s a lie, I the novella “By Omar’s Law” up in Kindle Vella just to try that out but that’s as far as that has gone.

Anyhoo, this is just a quick update to let you know where I am at. I appreciate you all.

Hey everyone!

So here we are almost two months later and Facebook has re-enabled my account. It was huge misunderstanding over business related posts I made six or seven years ago. I reached out to the company that made the complaint to resolve the issue. They retracted but it took Facebook that amount of time to finally review my issue.

For the record, I'm not upset with anyone, I understand why they have those policies in place but this experience did teach me something. Always have backups in place. If you don't own the platform, you are a slave to whims you have no control over. That and always put someone you trust as an admin to your pages and groups you run on that platform so if you get shuttered, it will still continue.

Anyway, I am still working on my urban fantasy novel. I thought I was going to be done at 60k words but I'm closing in on 73k today and I'm pretty sure that this will blast past 80k when it is finally finished. As always, I appreciate you all.

So, if you weren’t aware, “Them Bones” was my first novel. I started writing it in the summer of 2020 and was able to publish in September of that year. I had written some things before to include a short story of around fifteen thousand words called “The Gun,” which you can also pick up on Amazon for 99 cents. I’m thinking about maybe making that free at some point, but I’m not sure. As you can tell, I am learning this business as I go, and I hope you are enjoying the journey with me.

Anyway, back to my first novel. I wanted to give you a little backstory of how the novel came to be. With the whole COVID and stay at home orders, I was getting restless as I am sure you were too. I’ve always wanted to write a book… in fact, growing up, I would go and sit in the big bookstores for hours at a time just looking at books, thinking somehow my book would come into being by osmosis or something. 😉

I was sitting around, and the story just came to me… well, not the whole story but the general premise and starting off point. A coming of age murder mystery with a hint of the supernatural. That is what rolled through my mind.
When I was a kid, I went to Southern Illinois every summer, and that’s the backdrop and setting for both of my novels, “Them Bones” and “The Hermit.”

The town of Pittsburg in the book is a real place is Southern Illinois. It’s one of those small villages that catches your eye as you drive past and once past, no more thought is given to it. Also growing up, there were plenty of kids running around that village and villages like it. So that’s what I used. I used a little bit of my memories of the location, although I did change up some locations within the town to fit my idea of what I needed.

Also, the convenience store had been a real place, though it’s been closed down for years now. My cousins and I would go up there to play video arcade games. I used my memory of that location and added to it, changing some things around in the store, making it bigger for my purposes.

It took me about three months to write that book. I have to say, it’s been a neat experience and if you happen to be like me where you’ve always wanted to write a book, I highly encourage you to do so.

If you haven’t read it, the description is below.

“Nothing ever happens in the little village of Pittsburg, that is, until it does. For fourteen-year-old Joe Anderson, that was the case during the summer of 1992. The events that unfolded following a childhood game of hide and go seek in the woods changed the face of a small town and left a mark that was forever etched into the recesses of a boy's heart and mind. It was a summer of adventure, friendship, murder, first love, and pain. Them Bones is a coming-of-age, murder mystery novel set in a small, rural village with secrets of its own.”

Until next time...

Them Bones: Some Memories Will Haunt You

So, this past month, my writing progress was going swimmingly well. I have written 12k words so far by the tenth. That brings my current work in progress, an urban fantasy tale of a New Orleans Police Detective who happens to be a werewolf to 65k words.

Things were going well and I had planned to write yesterday because I make it a point to write everyday but last night found me in the Emergency Room for seven hours with my mom. Don't worry because thankfully it could have been a lot worse, she's okay but will require a few weeks to recuperate. That being said, I didn't get to write yesterday and today, I feel like a blown fuse so... looking doubtful.
Life happens. There are times when you gotta take a step back, readjust and move forward.

Sometimes, it can get overwhelming but as long as you don't quit, you'll get there. I don't know if anyone reads these but for the one or two people that do, or none, that's all that is fit for print this week.

Well, I am new to this though I really need to get better. What should I write here? I guess I could introduce myself a little. I am J.E. Jack and I published my first novel, "Them Bones," about two years ago. Since then I have gone on to publish two more, "The Hermit" and "Grave Disturbance."

I tend to think my first three novels are kind of like Stephen King's books except that they aren't as graphic.

After "Grave Disturbance," I wrote two fantasy works, one a short novelette and a follow up short novel in the same world following two brothers. I haven't really done anything with those two because, well, I am just not sure what to do with them as far as if I should just publish them under my name or a pen name since they are a different genre. We'll see.

I am currently working on an Urban Fantasy novel set in New Orleans. The protagonist is a New Orleans Police Department Detective who happens to be a werewolf. I expect that will come out this summer sometime.

After this one, I have another idea that I want to start that falls in line with the first three novels I wrote.

And if you made it this far through my rambling, you are a special person and I appreciate you. I am bumbling through this whole author thing but I'm learning a lot in the process. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask.

Hello everyone! If you previously followed my author's page on Facebook... well, just let me tell you now that I didn't block you. Facebook disabled my personal account over something I posted six years ago. It was nothing crazy and the company that made the complaint and I made amends and resolved the issue and they even retracted the complaint, but unfortunately, Facebook has not given me access back yet. But you can find me on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. just look for authorjejack. I appreciate you.