Blog
Read more about movies, writing books and self-improvement by fantasy/sci-fi author Ron Vitale.
I remember being in 5th grade and going to gym class, dreading it. I was a skinny kid, tall like a reed, and born with what my Uncle used to joke a "sunken treasure chest." I used to change for gym and be so embarrassed because my chest looked sunken in rather than a chest like Tarzan with big pecs. The medical terminology for the condition is Pectus excavatum and it's more common than people might think—1 in 1,000 births.
I'm writing this to you right after the Harvey Weinstein news has broken and women from all around the world are sharing their #MeToo stories. On a personal level, I logged into my Facebook account and was flooded with women sharing their stories of being sexually harassed and assaulted. The number of women I knew who had spoken up shocked me. And that's a good thing.
I grew up in a row home in Philadelphia with my grandparents. But even with the lack of a backyard, I remember how my grandfather used a small plot of land in the back to teach me how to garden. In our back was concrete to park the car and a narrow 4' x 20' bit of dirt. It may not have been a lot, but that's where my grandfather taught me how to grow tomatoes, peppers and basil.
I love reading. There are so many books out there these days and so little time. But that's a good thing! I'd rather have a tremendous amount of choice to go through than not enough. But there was a time that I only read one type of book. I loved fantasy and that was it. As a kid, I grew up on The Lord of the Rings and then Dungeons & Dragons. I loved elves, magic and wizards.
I've watched the news reports and I can't imagine the amount of rain that people in Texas and Louisiana have received from Hurricane Harvey. Back in 2011, my wife and I planned to take our kids to visit her cousins on the west coast. It was going to be our first big trip with the kids and we had saved up so that we could go. Several days before our trip Hurricane Irene reared its way toward us, and by the day we were supposed to leave, all flights were cancelled. I live more than 80 miles inland from the Atlantic ocean, but we were hit hard from the storm. We lost power for nearly three days, our basement was flooded and we had to rip up all the rugs, drag up the water logged rugs and eventually needed to rip out parts of the walls to treat the studs for mold, get french drains and go through rebuilding our basement. We only had a few inches of water in our basement.
Get ready for something different! My book Ahab's Daughter: The Werewhale Saga is available now on pre-order (launching September 12) and I wanted to share with you a story that's a prequel to the novel. You'll get some free fiction and it'll also give you a taste of what Ahab's Daughter is about. I hope you enjoy!
