Author: Bob

My name is Bob Trapp. I am a writer, among other things, from the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area. The purpose of this web site is to discuss my writing and to encourage writing overall. I have no idea if any of this will prove useful to others, but I hope someone can find some inspiration or advice here.

… But More About Me

As mentioned, I am a writer. I also teach computer programming and database development full time. My life has seen many jobs. I started in residential construction and remodeling. There was a little fortune telling during leaner days. I’ve repaired all sorts of machinery, from photocopiers to life support equipment. For many years, I made eye glasses before moving into industrial optics. It was a struggle, but I was moving gradually up the ladder of respectability. At one point, I was even a candidate for the Iowa State House (“You gotta pick the right guy to do the job; go out now and vote for LibertyBob, liberty bobbity boo!”)

The Lurker

Trouble coping with hot weather started in my teens. It was difficult for me to function during summer. I dropped a high school welding class because it was too warm.

At the same time, my stamina diminished. Where I had been able to run or ride bicycles with my friends, those abilities faded. That meant that my weight increased as well. People started to think of me as just another heavy kid who needed to get out more.

Later in high school, my family moved to the south. It is warmer there. Even in winter, they run their heaters a little higher than I like. In a few events, I collapsed, barely conscious.

The emergency room doctors found nothing. They performed EEG tests and a CAT scan, but the heart beat and there were no brain injuries. They decided it must be psychological. That’s where things stayed for quite a while.

In my early twenties, I found myself in the emergency room on many occasions, always during warm weather or when I over exerted. First responders demanded, “what did you take?” and always rolled their eyes when I was finally able to mutter that I hadn’t taken anything. They sat me in the air conditioned hospital until physicians could look me over, by which time I would have mostly recovered. Those doctors then sent me for psychiatric evaluation.

Almost Dead

In my early thirties, things had gotten really bad. The new doctors treated me for a respiratory infection and said I had a little fluid in my lungs. My weight sat at about 270 pounds (122 kg). I could barely breath or get up from a chair. It was necessary to sit in chairs instead of lie in bed to stop the constant coughing.

A friend, who was a former nurse, went over all my symptoms on the phone. She finally asked, “Can you get to the emergency room or do I need to take you?”

By this time in my life, I had my fill of dealing with emergency rooms, so I told her, “You seem to have an idea what you’re talking about. Why don’t you take me.”

She drove me to the E. R. and bullied them into running the tests she thought were necessary. High on that list of tests was an echocardiogram. This is a sonogram check of the heart, using sound waves to see what the heart is doing in real time. It was the one that paid off.

The left ventricle of my heart was damaged and enlarged. At this point, they could not be sure what caused the damage, but in discussion we decided that it was probably a severe flu I had at the age of eleven. The ejection fraction (the percent of blood pumped out of the ventricle) was in the 15-20% range. (NOTE: the normal range for healthy humans is 50 – 70, with 60-65 being common. Athletes such as soccer players and marathon runners are the ones that get near 70.)

Treatment

In the first few weeks, I dropped thirty pounds just by losing stored liquids. My cardiologist put me on pills, dietary and liquid restrictions, and structured but reduced physical activity. I could only work a few hours a day, and I was likely to fall asleep during those hours. Fortunately, I was good at what I did and was still productive compared with my predecessors.

There was also talk about the future. The prognosis was not good. The cardiologist discussed the likelihood of heart transplant within a couple of years. I didn’t know at the time, but the life expectancy was pretty low for someone in my condition. They didn’t understand my will power and work ethic.

I followed the doctor’s orders about the diet. I took my pills as instructed. I did my exercise and often pushed myself to do just a little bit more. Now that I knew what caused those years of trouble, I was determined to beat it.

One Year Later

On the annual recheck, they did another echocardiogram. It took a week for the results to come in. My cardiologist was ecstatic. He described running around the clinic to find his primary nurse to show her. My ejection fraction had climbed to about 35 percent.

It was at this time that I realized just how bad off I had been. They really had no hope for a recovery; they were just trying to delay my death by a small amount. The idea that I would start getting better had not entered their minds.

To School

Since the original diagnosis, my job had changed to the point where they could no longer accommodate my time and lifting restrictions. Being laid off meant filing lots of paperwork. The Social Security Administration considered me disabled. The doctors were surprised that I was working at all.

Not one for sitting around, I formed a plan. Being stuck in a chair meant I could probably sit at a computer. Even if I couldn’t get a full-time job, I could at least do something. With the help of Iowa’s Vocational Rehabilitation program, I found out what I could do to learn more about computing.

In middle school, a group of us had been encouraged to learn programming with the little computers available. Throughout all of my jobs, people always came to me with computer tasks or questions. Throughout all of that, I had never made a really serious study of the material, but it was time. I enrolled in the local college.

Within four years, I was graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. My ejection fraction had also increased to about 45 per cent. It was time to go back to work.

Eventually, I earned a Master of Science in Computer Science as well, and have the debt to prove it. It was this last degree that got me my teaching gig.

State of the Heart

Today, my heart is at the low end of the normal range. Summers still limit me and I won’t be running any marathons in the near future. These improvements happen as a combination of competent medical care, following doctor’s orders (but not their prognosis), and obnoxious determination.

Even as the heart improved in the fifteen years since the original diagnosis, it has had a serious impact on my life. The biggest impact probably comes from being told that I had an unidentified mental illness for so many years, even though it was just heart damage.

Many of my decisions and behaviors in my teens and twenties were based on the belief that there was something unreliable about my mind. I avoided many long-term romantic relationships because, if I couldn’t rely on me, how could I ask someone else to do so? I didn’t pursue many business endeavors for the same reason. Though I was a hard worker, I avoided interacting with the public if I could.

Check the Ankles

Today, things are much improved and I’m fully involved with attempting to accomplish more than just recovering from heart damage. I can do this because one former nurse took the time to ask the right questions. One of the big questions was: do you have swelling in your ankles?

The enlarged left ventricle is the source of the problem, but the trouble it causes is a form of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF). In this condition, the heart cannot move the blood around the body properly. There are many possible causes for CHF, but the results are about the same.

It is difficult to see CHF in the emergency room for a couple of reasons. First, emergency rooms mostly have three states for heart issues: it’s not beating, it is sort of beating but you are having a heart attack, or it is beating. If it is just beating fast and you have blood pressure, then they look for non-heart issues. Their job is to deal with the immediate issue and then move you on for long-term treatment by someone else.

Unfortunately, the symptoms of CHF are similar to the symptoms of many psychiatric issues, particularly anxiety attacks. Because some part of you is not getting blood, that part is not getting oxygen. You brain signals the body to breath heavy and to increase the pulse. If the heart is inefficient at what it does, making it go faster does no good.

With an enlarged heart, the pulse can be strong and the blood pressure fine, but the blood doesn’t really move very far with each beat. It’s like heavy traffic; the road is good and all the cars are there, but nobody gets anywhere. As a result, the body stores liquid instead of moving it out of the tissues where the blood flows. This just adds to the issue.

This is what tipped off my friend. When she asked about my ankles, she wanted to know if my body was storing excess fluid. This is one of the big differences between CHF and an anxiety attack. This is what told her that the echocardiogram was the tool to use. Thank’s to her knowing that, I’m, alive today.

Now, whenever I encounter new medical people, I relate that part of my story to them in the hopes that they will learn to look for the little signs that can push the diagnosis a different direction. Maybe it will save someone else’s life someday.

As for the Writing…

I’ve been a storyteller since childhood. When the cousins gathered around, I was the one to keep them entertained with tales invented on the spot. The cousins liked monster stories, mostly inspired by old movies.

In my teens, my friends liked to play role playing games. It got to the point where I never got to be a player, but had to manage the games because they liked the worlds I built, even if they didn’t always like my bad jokes. Into my late twenties, people invited me to their games just to breathe new life into stale scenarios.

A high school friend and I started writing a story long ago. Since we lived in different states, we exchanged through mail. Eventually, it died out. I still enjoyed the activity. It’s just something I like.

In computing, my strongest skills are modeling data and processes. These are the same skills used when building a world or story in fiction. I’ve actually used that as an assignment, making the students design a database to store parts of a story or historical event (same structure).

Unfortunately, I let the concept of “real work” get in the way of writing throughout my life. I always wondered if I could afford to direct my resources to the creativity rather than the sure thing that is a solid job. Now that I’m older, I can do both, and I have been.

I still need to put more into the writing side of my life. I need to associate with more other writers. I need to submit more materials for publication. I need to read more literature that has nothing to do with my day job. Getting at least one novel published is on my bucket list, and I have every intention of doing so.

In Conclusion…

That’s about all there is to know about me and this site. As I said, I don’t know if it will be useful to anyone. If nothing else, it may survive the next thousand years and be all that the historians and archeologists find of our civilization. If that’s the case, just remember this one thing about me: he was a good king.

I watched the new The Mummy movie from Universal’s Dark Universe franchise. It was more of an action movie than a horror movie.That got me thinking, what could have made it more horror?

Suspense seemed to be the missing component. At every step, the audience knew what was happening and what to expect. It would have been a cheat to bring out something completely unexpected, but there really needed to be some mystery.

Maybe suspense is difficult. Perhaps I’m asking too much, though I’ve seen plenty of movies with proper suspense. I wondered it I could pull off that sort of thing. That called for an experiment.

The Experiment

I sat in the Bistro on the writers’ night. Strange writer people sat around small tables, lost in conversations together or manuscripts alone. Bottles of wine filled the shelves that covered all the walls. The country music played a touch too loud for writing. The yellow lights were almost too dim for a pencil-and-notebook writer like me.

It should have been a good time to write, but something tugged at my mind. There was something not quite right, but I couldn’t tell what.

By nature, most writers are odd. Being in a group relaxes them enough that they let their strangeness flow more freely. I couldn’t pick any particular one of them that could be setting off my warnings. Maybe it was something else.

Cold air blasted from a vent near my feet. I hadn’t seen the vent lurking under the wine shelves. What other things could be hidden there? Old stories often include hidden things on or behind shelves. Disguised latches led to secret passages which led to the dark secrets themselves.

The Bistro was not the first occupant of this space. The structure was at least a century old and probably more. What had been here originally? What has lived here since?

It was a common theme in the area. The latest things covered over the past. Often, it was just a layer of new, a facade, lying atop the old. That-which-had-been slumbered beneath, projecting a subtle silhouette of itself on the surface.

Seventy million years ago, all of this sat in the silt of the Great Inland Sea, so the scientists said. As fearsome beasts fed in the sea above, the missed bits of their prey settled. Now those bits were fossils, old bones embedded in stones, dead to the world.

That was long past. So were the inhabitants of the last centuries, the pioneers and their children. What bones did they leave? Was it their own bones or that of their prey? Perhaps just the bones of labor and dreams.

I realized that my imagination was being active. The Bistro may be new in an old building, but there are building codes and inspections, especially when food is concerned. Anything bad left by the previous occupants would have been removed.

The same imagination remarked, “The inspectors only look at physical things.”

Cold continued its flow from the hidden vent beside me. A modern air conditioning system would blow air from the ceiling where it could settle and mix with the room air. The floor vent was just another leftover from elder days; the past infringing on the present.

When would floor vents have been put in? How far back did they go? Obviously they went back to when people could smoke cigarettes in businesses. Did it go back to bellbottom pants? Did it reach the days when men wore fedoras? When did it replace the pot bellied stove in the old shop?

How many people breathed the air that then went through those ducts? Was it just air, or did each person leave a subtle shade of themselves with each exhalation?

Again, an imagination running wild. Left on its own, it would build a community of ghosts lurking in the structure. Every employee, every customer, every mouse that ever sheltered under this roof adding to the specters dwelling in the walls.

I focused on shaking the feeling of presence. If it was just imagination, it could be overcome by thinking. With effort, I finally convinced myself that there was nothing in the vents nor in the shelves.

Relaxation came back and I could devote myself to writing. I did so with vigor.

As for the hidden vent beside my table, it continued to blow cold air. In the walls, the community of ghosts welcomed the small shadow of me that would always be there.

Analysis

My first concern was that this piece didn’t seem to tell much of a story. What was the conflict? What was the resolution? Then I realized it was one of those man versus himself stories the academics describe.

The narrator is fighting his own sense that something is subtly haunting his environment. Can he resolve this? He thinks he reaches resolution when he shakes the feeling and continues with his intended task. However, the real resolution would seem to be that the building has gotten the little piece of him that it wanted and it has let the rest of him go.

I noticed that the imagery of the piece seems to repeat. There is mention of pieces of prey falling to the seafloor to become fossils permanently stored. Then, there are references to pieces of the past protruding into the present. Finally, the story touches on pieces of the previous residents (human and animal) that are left behind. This all leads to the community of ghosts taking just a piece of the narrator.

As for suspense, that is more difficult to tell. I really think I would need an external audience to tell me if this is suspenseful. The problem is that I already know the story, so objectivity is out the window.

The attempt at suspense included several things. First, the narrator feels that something is wrong, but cannot give anymore detail than that. The idea is to leave the details as something to be revealed later and, hopefully, encourage the reader to go forward to the end.

The description of the bistro itself was intended to provide an uncomfortable place for a writer. Many writers would prefer a coffee shop, since those tend to be quieter and more cosy. The idea of loud country music and dim, yellow lights would seem inappropriate. I’ve also noticed that many people associate yellow lights with places that are not well lit and are more isolated.

The shelves and the vent should suggest hidden things. Mentioning the shelves in old movies should help bring up imagery that the reader already carries. Along with those images should be the feelings the reader experienced while watching those movies. If the person can bring along previous unease or fear, then it will just help add to the current feelings.

Existing fears are the reason for mentioning the Great Inland Sea. Many people don’t like the idea of deep waters and the predators that lurk there. The idea that the current dry land was once at the bottom of that sea is a little unsettling. Old fossils from that time are common, so it acts as a reminder of ancient death that still pokes through into our world. The ancient body of water can also tap into the imaginations of those who are fans of Lovecraft.

The mentions of all the people who have come and gone helps bring up the idea that many of those people are deceased. The proprietor of the business in the nineteen thirties would be long passed, and yet that person spent many days at the establishment, leaving breath and sweat, and whatever spirit one leaves through proximity. This suggests a gradual building of whatever it is the narrator is feeling.

The last attempt to add suspense is denial from the narrator. At several points, the narrator attempts to convince himself that the sensations are the work of an overactive imagination. If he had simply accepted that something was wrong, he would have chosen to walk out and been done with the whole thing. Good stories are rarely based on the protagonist making the wise decision to not get involved. By resisting his feelings, the narrator makes himself stay long enough for something to actually happen.

Those are my attempts to add suspense. Again, I cannot be objective about its effectiveness; I can only hope. Maybe that’s where the movie writers went wrong. Perhaps they did not get objective feedback on the suspense needed to make a horror movie instead of an action movie. On the other hand, it’s possible some executives somewhere decided that action was the way to go.

Economics is not about money; it is about resources. Everyone should study at least the basics, even though many would find it boring. However, if you are a writer and building a world, it is even more important that you know something about this subject. Here’s why:

As noted, economics is about resources, and their efficient use. Your fictional world has resources, so you should probably know what they are and who has them. There are natural resources, labor resources, and even intellectual resources (knowledge, skills, beliefs). Many historical conflicts are based on imbalances of resources and how people react to those imbalances.

Resources are also tied to political power. Those who control resources tend to control everything else. Just look at the power that large advertisers have in our real world. In your fictional world, this is likely to be true as well. Think about the good guys in your world and what they have. How does that compare to what the bad guys have? Is that a motivating factor for one side or the other?

Example: My World

I’ve been writing short stories and snippets of history for a fictional world for many years now. It is a well developed history for a fantasy world that has been used more for my mental exercise than anything else. I really should get around to publishing some of it some day. For now, though, it makes a good example of the effect of economics in a fictional world.

In my world, which has a dark-ages level of technology, there are tall mountains in the west that act as a natural barrier for most people. There are people who live there and produce metal from mines. They sell this metal to the farmers who live in the plains just to the east of them.

The farmers only have grain and some livestock to trade for the metal, but only a small amount because they are not very productive. To make matters worse, the Bad Guys live just to the south of them and often raid the farms for food and whatever else they can find. Note that the Bad Guys consider the farmers to be among the food items.

To the southwest, there is a forested area populated by a people called Lovelos. These people produce fruit and nuts for food and try to trade for other things. They are cut off from the grain farmers by the mountains and the Bad Guys. However, they do trade food to the mountain people for metals.

The Lovelos also have a sea coast that lets them circumvent the Bad Guys’ territory to the south and reach the fisher folk who live in the south east and south central shores of the continent. Because the fisher folk only fish, they have a Comparative Advantage (economics term) that means the Lovelos do not have to develop their fishing skill so much and can focus on their forests and fighting the Bad Guys. This gives the fisher folk access to fruits, nuts, and lumber.

All of this trade affects who can interact with whom, so it affects the spread of news, cooperation in the war, and who eats what. As an example, if a person from the fisher folk encounters a Lovelo, there would be an inclination to trust. However, a farmer from the plains would have little interaction with Lovelos and be less inclined to trust them. The fisher folk would know of the mountain people, but only get second-hand metal through trade with Lovelos or farmers.

Should the Bad Guys ever be defeated (no spoilers), there would be many story opportunities related to the establishment of trade routes and the effects of social interaction. Who would control those lands? Who would manage the natural resources there? These are sources for conflict and conflicts are sources for stories.

In my study of economics, I found that most people think the topic is boring. I get that; it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Even so, if you are building worlds of your own, you should consider doing a least a little reading. The specific sub-topic is Macroeconomics, which focuses on large systems, such as nations and states.

Note: My undergraduate degree was in computer science, but I loved my economics classes, so I started grad school in an economics program. The math was really intense and, though I loved every headachy minute of it, I decided that I was lazy. I decided to make use of my Absolute Advantage in computing (which is easy for me) and switched back to computer science.

My novel was, I thought, ready for submission. Then I found out that the agent that gave such good feedback had switched gears and started working in indie publishing. I’m probably too lazy for indie publishing at this time and would prefer to go the more traditional route. So now I must go back to preparing for that.

The main difference is that I need to rewrite my letter and synopsis. I should make more progress on these things, but avoidance and work have taken precedence. The only one to blame is me, and I’m also the only one to fix this.

I already had a letter and synopsis ready. However, I did get some critiques of those and it seems that they need to be modernized. All of the material I read about how to do them is, apparently, out of date. The modern form for both requires much more detail about the story and must be written almost as short stories themselves. It seems that the letter and the synopsis are there to convey not only information about your story, but to prove that you are a storyteller.

Given the competitive nature of the business, all of this makes sense. These first contacts are a chance to separate potentially good writers from the mediocre. It’s the same way I look at the format and writing of a resume when I have to make hiring recommendations; if it’s bad, it doesn’t make it.

Now I’m worrying myself over the content of the letter and synopsis. Obviously I can write an entire novel’s worth of material about my novel (quite a bit more, actually, based on my notes). How much is too much? When is it exciting enough? What will be intriguing enough to hook an agent without overburdening them text?

My normal cure when faced with writing difficulty is to meditate. This is another case where that will have to happen. I’m just going to have to do it and stop thinking about doing it. That’s how I got the novel written in the first place. That’s how I will have to get it published.

Presented here, the hairy vetch
A lowly, crawling, little wretch
Over nothing this thing towers
With its white and violet flowers

But, oh, together with its friends
Protects the soil from the winds
An army built of hairy stems
Weathering all the winter’s whims

Then when vetch has done its job
With hairy tendrils and seed pods
The glory does not end with winter
The vetch for livestock is provender