Explanations

I know what you're thinking: what the heck do I mean when I say that I'm a nearly-bionic man?

Well, maybe you weren't thinking that. But now, if you don't know me personally, you are.

If you do know me, you probably know something about my history of injuries and hardships. These began (like they do for a lot of people, if they really thought about it) at an early age.

When I was four, I underwent my first hernia surgery. (Yeah, the first of three surgeries of that kind.)

At age five, I was blown up, landing me in the ICU for a week and in the hospital's pediatric burn-unit for an additional three weeks. The nurses, in order to clear away the burned skin, used to scrub me down regularly. Apparently, they could hear me screaming in the next wing of the hospital. I was in bed so long, they needed to teach me how to walk again.

But learn to walk, I did. And run, jump, kick, and (my favorite) flip. Over the years, I've trained pretty extensively (I almost said "expensively" which, after a manner of thinking, is also true) in martial arts and gymnastics. I hold a 5th-degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and have trained in several other styles as well. My athletic endeavors have occasionally left me pretty busted up. My surgeries have included a double-metacarpal repair (which left me with two titanium plates and eight screws in my right hand), two ACL auto-grafts (which left me with two more screws in each knee), and not one but TWO hip replacements (to the same hip, as the first surgery didn't "take"), leaving me with a super-high-tech, dual-mobility, vitamin E-infused, chromed titanium artificial hip ... but without a compass in the stock. Dang it.

All this by the tender age of 46.

As I type this, I'm still recovering from the second hip surgery. The surgeon assures me that I will, if I'm patient, once again achieve full-splits, high kicks, and back-flips, all of which I could do (even if I was in a great deal of pain) up until the FIRST hip surgery last year.. So, what does this have to do with my work as a writer, you ask? A lot, it turns out. See, I've been writing fiction for quite some time, since I was a kid in the 1980's.. I completed my first novel by age 25. (Looking back on that one, I don't really want to brag it up so much. I can say some nice things about the work itself.. It has its moments. But the best thing I can say about it is that, well, I completed it. I saw it through.) Since then, however, I've grown a lot as a writer, completing other works with much better success. But I never had to time available to actually PUBLISH much. Oh sure, I had one or two short stories that saw publication. I shopped around my second novel (Gwai Lo, which may yet see the light of day--that is, be published--prior to the end of the year). But I never had too much time to work on getting my writing out in front of a wide readership. I was too busy. I've done a lot. I was a news reporter for several years in the 1990's. I've been a professional actor and stuntman in the Hollywood system. (If you're curious on that one, see one of my other websites www.jaredweber.com for more information). I'm an artist (www.EntrustedArt.com) I was (and still am, when I'm not injured) a gymnastics/martial arts coach for some great students. Most recently, I created, from scratch, a "Ninja" program, teaching gymnastics, martial arts, parkour, and general strength and fitness to kids. In other words, I've been extraordinarily busy. But now that I'm laid up--and on crutches--for a while, I actually have time to pursue the publication end of things. Perhaps this is "too much information" for some of you. If so, that's okay. You don't have to read my blogs to enjoy my fiction. I hope that, when it comes out, you'll give it a shot. I promise that it's a LOT more entertaining than this blog post has been. At any rate, Adventure Seekers, that is the explanation some of you were craving. Catch you on the flip'ty-flip.