Jackson Rezen's Blog
December 24, 2022
The Existential Dread
“The beeps and alarms, stethoscopes and scrubs, these things seen in movies that couldn’t possibly be real, only images made up in a director’s mind of what sick people should look like. He passed room after room, peaking ever so nonchalantly into them. Voyeuristic glances, praying to see person after person who was worse off than he was. It was not schadenfreude, there was no pleasure; it was its own behavior, something that drove him to see the medical misfortune of others with a curiosity of how far life will go, wondering what will be the breaking point. It was a vaccination for death, little bits and pieces creeping into his body, terrified of the whole, trying to get a taste to stow away for later when the disease finally comes.
In the end, we all will lose the battle. We are electric. Currents run through our neurons. Sodium and potassium pumping back and forth, negative to positive and back again. One day, the system will break down, the charges will dissipate, a computer unplugged. There are nothing but elements, atoms that conveniently sit in the right place at the right time and we decide that it’s consciousness. There is no discernible difference between the EKG monitor and the person it’s connected to. A long list of if/then statements. We are animals who have perfected cause and effect, computers who think that there is a language more sophisticated than binary, but your eyes are either open or closed, your arm is bent or straight, you are either alive or dead. The lottery is always fifty-fifty, either you win or you lose.”
This excerpt from The Captain of the Crew comes from the main character at the hospital his son is being treated in. He is feeling hopeless and tired and takes a moment, while walking through the hallway, to reflect on the futility of life.
Working in the medical field, especially on an ambulance, we see people at every stage in life. From fit, bucking, twenty-year-old men to decrepit, unresponsive, nursing home patients to pronouncements of the dead in their homes. Looking over the dead body of a person that you don’t know quickly reminds you how simple life is. The more you study the inner workings of cells and organ systems, the more you see how binary people are. Everything we do is based on cause and effect. If this then that. You learn when you are a child that if you push a glass off a table, the glass breaks. From that point on, your brain has coded the algorithm, and for the rest of your life, you cycle through all the algorithms that you have coded.
There are theories and debates, mostly out of fear, of where those algorithms, our consciousness, goes when we die, but at the cellular level there is no consciousness. The neurons in our brain are no more self aware than the software in a computer. Once the electrical system runs out of fuel, the system shuts down. I feel lucky to have the algorithms I have. That I have trained my algorithms to make up new algorithms and call it an imagination that I use to write. At the end of it all, I will run out of fuel and those codes and systems will dissipate into nothing. When we erase a computer, we don’t wonder where the pictures of our friends or the essays from college go. They are just simply gone. We will be just simply gone. And that’s okay.
In the end, we all will lose the battle. We are electric. Currents run through our neurons. Sodium and potassium pumping back and forth, negative to positive and back again. One day, the system will break down, the charges will dissipate, a computer unplugged. There are nothing but elements, atoms that conveniently sit in the right place at the right time and we decide that it’s consciousness. There is no discernible difference between the EKG monitor and the person it’s connected to. A long list of if/then statements. We are animals who have perfected cause and effect, computers who think that there is a language more sophisticated than binary, but your eyes are either open or closed, your arm is bent or straight, you are either alive or dead. The lottery is always fifty-fifty, either you win or you lose.”
This excerpt from The Captain of the Crew comes from the main character at the hospital his son is being treated in. He is feeling hopeless and tired and takes a moment, while walking through the hallway, to reflect on the futility of life.
Working in the medical field, especially on an ambulance, we see people at every stage in life. From fit, bucking, twenty-year-old men to decrepit, unresponsive, nursing home patients to pronouncements of the dead in their homes. Looking over the dead body of a person that you don’t know quickly reminds you how simple life is. The more you study the inner workings of cells and organ systems, the more you see how binary people are. Everything we do is based on cause and effect. If this then that. You learn when you are a child that if you push a glass off a table, the glass breaks. From that point on, your brain has coded the algorithm, and for the rest of your life, you cycle through all the algorithms that you have coded.
There are theories and debates, mostly out of fear, of where those algorithms, our consciousness, goes when we die, but at the cellular level there is no consciousness. The neurons in our brain are no more self aware than the software in a computer. Once the electrical system runs out of fuel, the system shuts down. I feel lucky to have the algorithms I have. That I have trained my algorithms to make up new algorithms and call it an imagination that I use to write. At the end of it all, I will run out of fuel and those codes and systems will dissipate into nothing. When we erase a computer, we don’t wonder where the pictures of our friends or the essays from college go. They are just simply gone. We will be just simply gone. And that’s okay.
November 21, 2022
The Art of the Plot Hole
I write plot holes. Big, gigantic, gaping plot holes. Everything seems to work well in the outline at first, and then, as it gets fleshed out, I watch it fall apart slowly because this character could never be here at the same time as they are there, and this would be too easy for someone to figure out and yada, yada, yada. So I have to fill the holes, which makes more holes, and more holes until i have created an entire new subplot just to fix one little detail. This is the art of the plot hole.
When I was building the world of The Captain of The Crew, I constantly ran into this problem. There's a tight rope an author must walk when creating a crime story. The system has to have the cracks in the exact right place for the criminals to sneak into. If they are too big then it feels obvious and badly designed, if they are too small then it feels impossible and the suspension of disbelief becomes too dramatic. Similarly, the methods that the criminals use have to be just the right level of conniving. If they are too perfect then it feels like air vents on the Death Star and if they are too lazy then they would undoubtedly get caught. This is the conundrum.
A perfect example of this in my book is Angiocoin. The origin of Angiocoin, and subsequently the downfall of the economy, was originally created to fill a plot hole. I was working through the idea of how to have The Crew steal copious amounts of money. If they simply transferred it to their own bank account then that would be traceable. They could have sent it to an offshore account, but I don’t know enough about Swiss banks to make that believable and the research was daunting. So how does one move millions of dollars from a federally trackable account into thin air? Put it in cryptocurrency, of course. But again, there would be lots of research on which modern crypto was the most encrypted and untraceable. So instead, I invented a new one. One that would be the revolution of crypto -- it would be stable and catch the public’s attention more than the impossible flux of say Bitcoin. What if every Angiocoin was matched one for one with a US dollar? This way it wouldn't matter how much was bought or sold, the value would never change. Boom, solved.
BUT, of course, I needed to build that into the world of the Cut Wrist Crew and make it feel real and less like a plot hole patch. It had to have an impact on society, enough that it wasn’t some obscure dias de machnia. What’s the best way to make something feel like it's shaking up the economy? Throw the government at it; and then, by extension, make the public pissed about it. And hell, the natural outcome is the public loves the Cut Wrist Crew for stickin’ it to the man.
So there you go. From one tiny plot hole of traceable money, came the entire world of the book. There are other examples but you get the point. A lot of this book came from trying to fill one little plot hole that blew up into chapters worth of work arounds which inadvertently added a world of depth that I would have never thought of from the start. This is my writing process. I come up with a cool story, get halfway through, realize there is a problem, and then spend many sleepless nights and character development trying to figure out how to fix it which may or may not change the entire course of the book. It works for me.
If you are a new writer, give it a go.
The Captain of The Crew
When I was building the world of The Captain of The Crew, I constantly ran into this problem. There's a tight rope an author must walk when creating a crime story. The system has to have the cracks in the exact right place for the criminals to sneak into. If they are too big then it feels obvious and badly designed, if they are too small then it feels impossible and the suspension of disbelief becomes too dramatic. Similarly, the methods that the criminals use have to be just the right level of conniving. If they are too perfect then it feels like air vents on the Death Star and if they are too lazy then they would undoubtedly get caught. This is the conundrum.
A perfect example of this in my book is Angiocoin. The origin of Angiocoin, and subsequently the downfall of the economy, was originally created to fill a plot hole. I was working through the idea of how to have The Crew steal copious amounts of money. If they simply transferred it to their own bank account then that would be traceable. They could have sent it to an offshore account, but I don’t know enough about Swiss banks to make that believable and the research was daunting. So how does one move millions of dollars from a federally trackable account into thin air? Put it in cryptocurrency, of course. But again, there would be lots of research on which modern crypto was the most encrypted and untraceable. So instead, I invented a new one. One that would be the revolution of crypto -- it would be stable and catch the public’s attention more than the impossible flux of say Bitcoin. What if every Angiocoin was matched one for one with a US dollar? This way it wouldn't matter how much was bought or sold, the value would never change. Boom, solved.
BUT, of course, I needed to build that into the world of the Cut Wrist Crew and make it feel real and less like a plot hole patch. It had to have an impact on society, enough that it wasn’t some obscure dias de machnia. What’s the best way to make something feel like it's shaking up the economy? Throw the government at it; and then, by extension, make the public pissed about it. And hell, the natural outcome is the public loves the Cut Wrist Crew for stickin’ it to the man.
So there you go. From one tiny plot hole of traceable money, came the entire world of the book. There are other examples but you get the point. A lot of this book came from trying to fill one little plot hole that blew up into chapters worth of work arounds which inadvertently added a world of depth that I would have never thought of from the start. This is my writing process. I come up with a cool story, get halfway through, realize there is a problem, and then spend many sleepless nights and character development trying to figure out how to fix it which may or may not change the entire course of the book. It works for me.
If you are a new writer, give it a go.
The Captain of The Crew
November 8, 2022
Write What You Know
When starting out in writing, they always say, “write what you know.” I have had a lot of jobs throughout the years. (Some of you old farts may turn your nose up at a 27 year old saying “through the years,’' but hear me out.) Since high school, I have had aspirations that change with the season. I go all in on a lifelong career for about a year and a half. As the tide shifts, I read a book, watch a movie, or talk to a friend and decide “that is where I need to be.” Though it wears on my long term sanity, it has shown me many sides of this world and has made me probably one of very few people to have worn a dance belt on stage, shot an M2 Browning, done CPR in a moving ambulance, and climbed a 2000 foot cliff. From there, I write.
The largest part of The Captain of the Crew that I draw from personal experience is the medical descriptions. To date the longest career that I’ve managed is in emergency medicine. In 2017 I took a Wilderness First Responder class that peaked my interest and followed it up in 2018 with an EMT certification. I worked in an array of fields including interfacility transport, and event medicine. In 2022 I upgraded to Paramedic and now work on an ambulance in New Jersey doing 911 response. My time in the field gave me an insight on how the sick are handled and a general understanding of the hospital process. The details of the hospital rooms, staff, and equipment come from hours of touring inpatient rooms. (Stay tuned for a later blog post with an excerpt from the book about medical existentialism.)
I also drew a little inspiration from my time in the Army National Guard for Doc’s character. I graduated Basic Training as a combat medic in 2020 and expressed a lot of my opinions in his history. I grew up in a very pacifist household that focused more on intelligence and creation than following orders so the Army was a bit of a culture shock. I don’t know what I was expecting.
Everything else is mostly from my imagination. I have no background in finances or banking so pushing the plot into the future gave me some leeway to make the story what I want without having to be strictly accurate. Angiocoin was a concept that I made up to plug a plot hole. (More on the art of plot holes in the next post.) The tech that the crew uses is mostly made up of concepts we have now but more advanced. (Check back for a blog post about the origin of the technology in the book.) I don’t actually even know if the car cover is feasibly possible but it sounds cool so, fuck it.
Check out the book here! www.linktr.ee/jacksonrezen
The Captain of The Crew
The largest part of The Captain of the Crew that I draw from personal experience is the medical descriptions. To date the longest career that I’ve managed is in emergency medicine. In 2017 I took a Wilderness First Responder class that peaked my interest and followed it up in 2018 with an EMT certification. I worked in an array of fields including interfacility transport, and event medicine. In 2022 I upgraded to Paramedic and now work on an ambulance in New Jersey doing 911 response. My time in the field gave me an insight on how the sick are handled and a general understanding of the hospital process. The details of the hospital rooms, staff, and equipment come from hours of touring inpatient rooms. (Stay tuned for a later blog post with an excerpt from the book about medical existentialism.)
I also drew a little inspiration from my time in the Army National Guard for Doc’s character. I graduated Basic Training as a combat medic in 2020 and expressed a lot of my opinions in his history. I grew up in a very pacifist household that focused more on intelligence and creation than following orders so the Army was a bit of a culture shock. I don’t know what I was expecting.
Everything else is mostly from my imagination. I have no background in finances or banking so pushing the plot into the future gave me some leeway to make the story what I want without having to be strictly accurate. Angiocoin was a concept that I made up to plug a plot hole. (More on the art of plot holes in the next post.) The tech that the crew uses is mostly made up of concepts we have now but more advanced. (Check back for a blog post about the origin of the technology in the book.) I don’t actually even know if the car cover is feasibly possible but it sounds cool so, fuck it.
Check out the book here! www.linktr.ee/jacksonrezen
The Captain of The Crew
October 15, 2022
The Origin of The Captain of the Crew
The Origin of the Story
Way back in 2013, I was taking a film production class in high school and regularly wrote screenplays as part of my coursework. I planned to continue my filmmaking study in college and needed some samples of work to submit as part of my application. Around the same time, I saw the movie "Idiocracy"— a ridiculous film that, by the way, has become extraordinarily prophetic to our current times. In the film, all citizens get a barcode tattooed on their wrist which has their full identity coded into it. I loved the futuristic concept and started wondering what theft might be like in a world where people keep their identity and finances in a piece of scannable tech in their wrists.
That was the spark. I ran with the idea, figuring out some of the basics about the world I was creating. I found more inspiration in the classic film "Psycho," namely, the idea of killing off what may seem like the main character early on in the story. So I had the world, and I had the conflict, the last thing I needed were the characters. More inspiration came from a classmate who had made a fun, nonsensical film where the lead character was a secret agent named “H”, as well as a love for "Men in Black" and a smattering of Tarantino films. I decided to give my characters single letter monikers. (Up until very late in the editing process, C’s character was called “H” which was short for “head” as in the “head of The Crew.” It was changed due to the difficulty of misreading “H” as “He." Also, the working title of the story, The Cut Wrist Crew, was changed because some of the feedback was that it implied the story was about suicide.)
So there I had it. A world, a conflict, and a character. My short screenplay started with the main character getting ready for the day, leaving his house, and going to the bank where he worked. Half way through the story, the bank is robbed and the main character’s co-worker is taken hostage. The main character is then shot and killed throwing the story into chaos. The viewer then is drawn along out of the bank and into the getaway car where they are united with the true protagonists. It was bold and intense and there was a lot of excitement. I submitted the screenplay to Montclair State University's film program along with some other short films and, happily I was accepted. I graduated MSU with a BFA in filmmaking in 2017.
The screenplay was shelved. I thought about it over the years but knew that turning it into a film would take thousands, or even millions of dollars, so I never moved on with it. After years of doing too many other things with my life, I found myself working a security job, mostly chasing homeless people away, and protecting the Colorado Department of Agriculture from disgruntled employees. There was a huge amount of downtime, especially on overnight shifts which I used for reading — and writing. I remembered the Captain of The Crew story from my college application and, started formulating it into a detailed outline for a book. (I realized a magical thing about writing books versus screenplays is that you can write anything without having to think about the production budget.)
The rest is history. I spent about two years writing rewriting, and editing until I got a finished story, fully fleshed out, grammatically correct and all. (Thanks to my editor, proofreader and beta readers.) That is The Captain of the Crew. I hope you will pick up a copy, or download and enjoy!
The Captain of The Crew
Way back in 2013, I was taking a film production class in high school and regularly wrote screenplays as part of my coursework. I planned to continue my filmmaking study in college and needed some samples of work to submit as part of my application. Around the same time, I saw the movie "Idiocracy"— a ridiculous film that, by the way, has become extraordinarily prophetic to our current times. In the film, all citizens get a barcode tattooed on their wrist which has their full identity coded into it. I loved the futuristic concept and started wondering what theft might be like in a world where people keep their identity and finances in a piece of scannable tech in their wrists.
That was the spark. I ran with the idea, figuring out some of the basics about the world I was creating. I found more inspiration in the classic film "Psycho," namely, the idea of killing off what may seem like the main character early on in the story. So I had the world, and I had the conflict, the last thing I needed were the characters. More inspiration came from a classmate who had made a fun, nonsensical film where the lead character was a secret agent named “H”, as well as a love for "Men in Black" and a smattering of Tarantino films. I decided to give my characters single letter monikers. (Up until very late in the editing process, C’s character was called “H” which was short for “head” as in the “head of The Crew.” It was changed due to the difficulty of misreading “H” as “He." Also, the working title of the story, The Cut Wrist Crew, was changed because some of the feedback was that it implied the story was about suicide.)
So there I had it. A world, a conflict, and a character. My short screenplay started with the main character getting ready for the day, leaving his house, and going to the bank where he worked. Half way through the story, the bank is robbed and the main character’s co-worker is taken hostage. The main character is then shot and killed throwing the story into chaos. The viewer then is drawn along out of the bank and into the getaway car where they are united with the true protagonists. It was bold and intense and there was a lot of excitement. I submitted the screenplay to Montclair State University's film program along with some other short films and, happily I was accepted. I graduated MSU with a BFA in filmmaking in 2017.
The screenplay was shelved. I thought about it over the years but knew that turning it into a film would take thousands, or even millions of dollars, so I never moved on with it. After years of doing too many other things with my life, I found myself working a security job, mostly chasing homeless people away, and protecting the Colorado Department of Agriculture from disgruntled employees. There was a huge amount of downtime, especially on overnight shifts which I used for reading — and writing. I remembered the Captain of The Crew story from my college application and, started formulating it into a detailed outline for a book. (I realized a magical thing about writing books versus screenplays is that you can write anything without having to think about the production budget.)
The rest is history. I spent about two years writing rewriting, and editing until I got a finished story, fully fleshed out, grammatically correct and all. (Thanks to my editor, proofreader and beta readers.) That is The Captain of the Crew. I hope you will pick up a copy, or download and enjoy!
The Captain of The Crew
