TOMORROWIF I LEAVE HERE

Tales of Risk and Rebirth

AN INVICTUS COLLECTION: VOL. 1

TOMORROWIF I LEAVE HERE

EDITED BY

Tales of Risk and Rebirth

AN INVICTUS COLLECTION: VOL. 1

BRAD KING

INTRODUCTION BY

DAVID C. AKE

C o n t e n t s

Foreword by Brad King ix

Introduction by David C. Ake xvii

WAYSTATION. David C. Ake 51

UGLY LITTLE MONSTER. Laura Rose Allen 31

BLESSED BE THE TIES THAT BIND. Tiffany Holbert 71

THE CITY THAT STOPPED A CYNIC. Kyle James Hovanec 105

FILLING EMPTY SPACES. Kelly Shea 3

PATHWAYS. Rhett Umphress 87

About 129

Contributors 131

“Let go of the past and go for the future. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you imagined.” –Henry David Thoreau

he book you are reading is something more than a collection of essays written by a group of young writers whose only connections to one another are the university they attended and the rather difficult professor they

encountered. For them and for me, this book is both the end and the beginning of a journey. We began in August 2010 when I sent an email to a collection of promising writing students —some graduated, some not—explaining a project I envisioned. If they would commit to a year of writing, I said, we could have enough material to put out a book using on-demand and e-book distribution methods. The rest would be up to them. The only things I offered were my house as a meeting place, freshly made blueberry pancakes, and coffee—plus the occasional kick in the pants when they needed it. Ten students originally committed to the project, a number that dwindled to six by the end of the school year. The project’s scope shrank as well. They had planned to write three essays each—one for each of the themes we had decided on—but quickly realized it made more sense for each author to write one well-crafted piece that touched on the three thematic elements they decided upon: travel, mentor, and struggle. The strict definition of what that meant to each of them was ambiguous, to be filled in by the individual writer. What began to emerge are the stories that comprise this book. The more I pulled away from the project, the more the students—the writers—stepped up. Leaders emerged. Others offered their skills as copy editors, designers, and promoters. The group attacked each problem as it arose, found solutions, and moved forward.

F o r e w o r d

T

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” –Ernest Hemingway

any of you have gone through your whole life having people tell you that you write well. Your parents and newspaper teachers from high school probably told you that you write nice stories. Many of you have

been told your whole life that you’re good writers. I’m here to tell you that you’re not.” This is how Brad King started the first class of Introduction to Magazine Writing, which I found myself in during the 2009 fall semester at Ball State University. As he spoke, I saw fear on the faces of my classmates. This was probably the first time anyone, especially a writing instructor, told them they weren’t good writers. Some people would not be back for the second class. I smiled. I was in the right place.

* * *

hen I was 18, I joined the Army. On the first day of basic training, I watched Drill Sgt. Washington scare a kid so badly he threw up in his mouth. The kid stood, shaking with cheeks filled with vomit, as Drill Sgt. Washington

screamed. If a single drop hit the floor, he hollered, the recruit would clean it up with his tongue. The kid turned green, then white, and then green again before swallowing the mouthful of vomit. Fear, it seemed, was a powerful motivator. After basic training, I was stationed in Germany for three years, where I became a tank gunner, pulling triggers on an M1A1 Abrams before landing a a position on the platoon sergeant’s tank, which meant that although I didn’t carry much rank, by merit of my position I had authority within the platoon. While

I n t r o d u c t i o n

“M

W

by Kelly Shea

Filling Empty Spaces

xiiiFilling Empty Spaces

n a bleak night in May 2006, I opened my eyes to a pitch-black bedroom filled with silence. I strained to focus on the numbers glowing from my alarm clock: 10 p.m. Something felt wrong. I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Why am I in bed this early? Tonight was prom night. My stomach sank. As I clutched my pillow for support, the flashbacks crept up, each one worse than the last. In the dramatic ways that teenagers sometimes do, I realized that my life was over. At least the life I’d built so carefully before. I had almost made it through my junior year of high school, but after this, things would never be the same. As I played the coming day in my head, I fell into despair. Haunted already, I cried myself to sleep.

* * *

Four months earlier, I’d been lying on my best friend Anna’s bed looking through an old box of photographs. I giggled at the pictures of us from just a few years back. She was 50 pounds overweight, and I was fresh out of a back brace. As I flipped through the pictures, Anna was at her desk, working her phone like a stockbroker, throwing glances my way between conversations to fill me in on party plans that really didn’t concern me at all. My stomach tightened when the doorbell rang. She ran downstairs to answer it with excited eyes, flying out of the room in a flash of shiny black hair. I heard her footsteps returning and shoved the box of photographs in a drawer, fearful that one of the guests might ask to browse through them. Since then, Anna had lost the weight and blossomed into a 17-year-old socialite. I’d lost the brace but hadn’t found similar confidence.

O

by Laura Rose Allen

Ugly Little Monster

xviiUgly Little Monster

t’s a little ironic that we decided to meet in the middle of a school parking lot, considering that school would later be our battleground. He was there to save his ass. I was there to make some sense of it all. I was 18 and just graduated

from high school, still young and incredibly naive. A little after 8 a.m. on June 23, 2008, I pull my black Sunfire into South Elementary School’s empty parking lot. I wait with my heart pounding and a mix of emotions rushing through me. It doesn’t take long for the sexy, little, red Mustang to pull up next to me. In it is my 28-year-old cross-country coach. He steps out of his car, and I do the same. “Sunglasses off,” I tell him. He whips them off and replies, “I’m not going to lie to you, Laura.”

* * *

Two years before I met Drew, I was an awkward 16-year-old sophomore living in a suburb of Cincinnati. Like just about every other teenager in the country, I went to school and immediately began to count down the minutes until I was free again, which arrived at exactly 1:52 p.m. After the final bell rang, I rushed to my locker, grabbed my books, and made my way to the locker room. Since I’m a runner, freedom didn’t mean heading home. It meant going to the locker room to meet my teammates, change clothes, lace up my track shoes, and head to practice. We would pile into our cars, crank Kiss107, and swap stories about boys, dreams, and the day. We lived in our little world, and it was bliss. It was a gloomy practice in April, and the team was stretching out on the corner of the track when a flicker of red caught my eye. Stepping out of a

I

by David C. Ake

Waystation

xxiWaystation

’d been in the Army for two years when the girl I thought I was going to marry broke my heart. She called me crying and said she didn’t love me anymore. It was over. Our forever was no more.

Save your pity because it’s not as sad as it sounds. It was my first love, but it wasn’t true love. It was one of those high school infatuations with love that lasts far too long —three years too long. Like a million young fools, I asked her to be my girlfriend when I left for training. We wrote letters that naively mapped out our lives after the Army. But after basic training I was stationed in Germany and she stayed in the states, and the bond between our hearts broke from the separation of thousands of miles. She did what I was too stupid to do when she called to ask if we could still be friends. I was heartbroken, and when my unit was allowed to go on leave and no one was waiting for me back home, I was lonely. Summer was coming to an end in 2003. Fighting units were rotating into Afghanistan, and President George W. Bush was on TV celebrating the democracy America had just brought to a freshly “liberated” Iraq. For soldiers at the time, uncertainty hung in the air like a fog. We didn’t know when the orders would come down, but we were sure we’d be in a combat zone soon. My unit missed the invasion and subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, but we knew it was only a matter of time before it was our turn. The commander told us he’d try to get us a mission so we could stop watching the war on TV, but for now, he said, we should be with our families. Usually when we were allowed to go on leave, I caught the first plane home to be with my girlfriend. I should have flown home to Indiana to visit my family, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near my hometown. It’s a small place; I didn’t

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” –Mark Twain

I

xxiiiStory

by Tiffany Holbert

Blessed Be the Ties That Bind

xxvStoryxxv

t was a few weeks before my 15th birthday, in August 2002, when the day came. I sat cramped in a window seat, agitated and antsy. We had just settled in with our bags secured overhead and seatbelts fastened. Our breathing was

still heavy from the dart we made from one end of the airport to the other. It had been several months since my parents broke the news of their decision to divorce and live 1,000 miles apart. I chose to go with my mom to Florida, leaving behind my whole world in Anderson, our small hometown in Indiana. Only now, as I sat on this plane with its engine roaring, did it all become real to me. “I can’t hold it,” I told my Mom. I took a deep breath of stale, cold cabin air and darted toward the back of the plane, headed toward the lavatory. Once inside, I took a deep breath, suddenly feeling claustrophobic. I tried to fight the tears burning behind my eyes, but at that moment I realized my fight was gone. I’d spent all of my energy over the past several months trying to keep my composure so that I could handle this situation gracefully. There was a knock on the door, followed by the voice of a flight attendant asking if I was all right. I was holding up our departure. I mustered an affirming sound and wiped my face before I pushed the door open and headed back to my seat. People looked at me, irritated that I’d delayed their journeys, but I was in no hurry to begin mine. In the final days of the divorce, when I made the decision to go to Tampa, I told myself that this would turn out okay – that starting over in the sunshine would be better than the mess that surrounded me here. I climbed over my mother’s lap and tripped over my brother’s lanky legs before slumping down in my seat again. Another flight attendant stood in front of us. She said her last words before departure and hung up the microphone. Somehow, I’d convinced myself that this would be easy, that moving to

I

TIFFANY HOLBERT

by Rhett Umphress

Pathways

xxixPathways

took a seat in the office, if that’s what you could call it. I could stretch out my 6-foot, 2-inch frame and touch both walls. Add in the desk, computer, a few chairs, and a bookshelf, and there wasn’t a lot of room to work with.

“Do you have an idea where you want to go for college,” my high school adviser asked. She was a small-framed woman but held herself with a large sense of authority. It had been three years since I had any meaningful conversation with her. As I entered my senior year at Bloomington High School North in Indiana in August 2003, she now wanted to know what my plans were. No, I really didn’t know what awaited me at the end of the school year, I thought. College was always on the agenda. I had received straight A’s all through high school without maximum exertion. The four years after high school would be spent in classrooms, I just hadn’t given much thought to where those classrooms would be and what I’d be doing in them. All my other friends had plans beginning to unfold. They had sent applications and essays already. The admissions staff at their favorite colleges—the University of Washington-St. Louis, Stanford University, even my hometown’s Indiana University—knew who they were and why they wanted to go to school there. Few people outside of the walls of my high school had ever heard of me. Of course, I couldn’t say that to my guidance counselor. Those kinds of comments elicit long meetings, for which I had no particular stomach. Instead, I mumbled something about starting to look, hoping to end the conversation as soon as possible. Undaunted, the adviser went on, telling me about the importance of upcoming deadlines and how I needed to start sending applications. All I really wanted was to get back to class. The future was hard, but classes

I

By Kyle James Hovanec

The City That Stopped the Cynic

xxxiiiThe City That Stopped the Cynic

he snow slowly drifted down as I walked to Studebaker West Complex, an aging building located on the far end of Ball State University, where I was in my sophomore year. I wasn’t the wide-eyed, naive student I once was, but I

was not experienced enough to have a firm grasp of the world. I was going to see my girlfriend who had just sent me a text. “I need to see you, its urgent!” I had no idea why she would send me this text at 9 p.m. on a Friday, a day she normally spent hanging out with her friends. I was never one to expect the worst, but the feeling that something wasn’t right swirled in my brain as I approached the building. I opened the main door, and before I could text her to find out where she was, I saw her sitting on a couch in the lobby. My heart sank; my stomach felt queasy. She sat on the couch looking at me with a half-smile as her eyes glistened in the light. Her eyes were wet. She had been crying. I sat down next to her, putting my arm around her. I mustered a weak smile. Whatever she had to tell me, it wasn’t going to be pleasant. “What’s wrong?” I asked as I gave her a hug. “Why did you need to see me?” Those wet, glistening eyes looked at me. Her half-smile transformed into a frown. Her eyes began to tear up. “Kyle,” she whispered, “this isn’t going to work out anymore.” “What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant but refusing to believe it. “I’m breaking up with you.” “Why?” I asked. “I don’t really know you at all, you know. We’ve spent three months together, and we’ve never really done anything, you know? I don’t think it’s just going to work anymore.”

T

he Invictus Writers, as I dubbed them, set out to answer this question, individually: Am I a writer? This is the problem with so many writers. There is much talk about

writing, but little actual writing. What writing is done is oftentimes littered with frivolous, narcissistic ramblings that both refuse to delve into the depths of the writer and offer up attempts as understanding human nature. That is the curse of the young writer (and maybe of youth)—a lack of depth masquerading as an understanding of life experience. The wise, writer or not, understand this simple idea: Life is small and full of details. The events of the moment reveal larger truths. But that doesn’t happen through exposition. That happens through an understanding of the moment in a context. Writing isn’t about universal truths. Writing is about individual moments. Finding those places is difficult, and it can’t be done in one night. Being a writer means writing every day. It means searching inside you for stories, for empathy, for understanding, for emotion. It means placing yourself in your characters’ lives and understanding who they are and why they are. Writing is about being human. And you can’t do that part time. That endeavor is not easy. To write means to dig through the emotional well of your life and piece it together in words on a page for strangers to read. That’s why so many people stare blankly at the empty page. Deep inside them they know to fill that with words requires a great deal of pain. I affectionately refer to that particular demon as The Fear. But The Fear comes in many parts. Long past is the first moment when The Fear of the words betraying them has faded and the final moment when The Fear that they didn’t tell the story in the way they’d hoped washed away. What remains for them, as you finish this book, is The Fear that they won’t have another story within them. You are not a writer until you have faced all of that. I say face because a writer

A b o u t

T

xxxvi About

will never conquer it. Like death, The Fear looms in front of every story. The Invictus Writers don’t yet know this particular truth yet, but they will soon. Several have already started work on their next big writing adventure. They have each found the trailhead to the life’s path. In facing The Fear, the Invictus Writers each found the answer to that question they hoped I would give them.

BRAD KING

BRAD KING grew up telling stories. All kinds of stories if you believe his parents. Growing up in Loveland, Ohio, a small town on the edges of Cincinnati’s rural farmlands, he spent much of his childhood creating games and building fantasy story worlds. Since then, his passion for storytelling has never wavered. After graduating from Miami University in 1994, King earned his Master’s from the University of California at

Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in 2000. He then went to work for Condé Nast’s Wired magazine and its sister website Wired News covering the convergence of technology and culture. In 2002 he co-authored Dungeons & Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic, a book on the history of computer games, virtual worlds and their effects on American culture for McGraw-Hill. In 2004, he was the senior editor and executive producer for MIT’s Technology Review online operation. Today he is an assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University. In 2010, he edited Bunker Hill Extreme: How Seven Days in the Cold, Rain, and Mud Changed a Community, a student-produced book about the television program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s production in Kokomo, Indiana.

DAVID C. AKE grew up on a dead-end dirt road outside of Monticello, Ind. He joined the Army after high school, serving four years overseas in Germany and Iraq as an M1A1 Abrams tank gunner. He credits the letters he often wrote home as the catalyst for his writing career. At the end of his service, David went back to Indiana

C o n t r i b u t o r s

xxxviii Contributors

and earned an associate’s degree while writing for several newspapers. He started as an advertising salesman, writing stories in his spare time before becoming a full-time daily news reporter. David left newspapers to study magazine journalism and political science at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. He lives there with his girlfriend Anjee. After Ball State David hopes to continue his education and earn a master’s degree in magazine journalism.

LAURA ROSE ALLEN was hanging out a McDonald’s Drive-Thru window at the age of 16 when she decided she wanted to be a magazine writer. Born and raised in the suburbs of Cincinnati she was the first born to Greg and Christine Allen, and sister to Beth and Julie. She grew up pursuing a variety of sports and interests, and discovered a passion for writing along the way. After graduating from Fairfield High School in 2008,

Laura began attending Ball State University to pursue a degree in magazine journalism. She plans on graduating from Ball State in the summer of 2011, and hopes to live in New York City as a freelancer someday.

TIFFANY HOLBERT realized her love for words early in grade school when she was introduced to the school library. When she wasn’t lost in the latest book she’d picked up, she was trying her hand at writing her own short stories and poems. Born in Anderson, Ind. where she was raised until the age of 14, she relocated with her mother to Tampa, Fla. where she went to high school and began her college career at the University of South

Florida. In 2008, she returned to her home in Indiana and continued her education at Ball State University, where she graduated with a degree in Public Relations in July of 2010. Before graduation, Holbert participated in the social media team for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where she wrote short stories capturing the behind-the-scenes activities of the show’s Kokomo production. She currently resides in Indianapolis, Ind. where she works as an account coordinator at an advertising and public relations agency. In the future, she

xxxixContributors

hopes to find an avenue that will allow her to indulge her passion for writing and the arts.

KYLE JAMES HOVANEC was born in Seoul, South Korea to parents he never knew. He was adopted at three months old by Richard and Debra Hovanec who have since raised and loved him along with his three siblings: Jordan, Samantha, and Nicholas. Kyle grew up in Crown Point, Indiana and attended school at Westfield Elementary School until the age of six, where he and his family then moved to Valparaiso,

Indiana where he attended Union Center Elementary and Middle School, and eventually Wheeler High School. During these years Kyle began to develop a fascination with writing and magazine style writing. After completing high school Kyle began attending Ball State University to earn a degree in Magazine Journalism and Digital Storytelling. Kyle is currently a senior in his final semester. Kyle has written for three online publications and has also worked on a student produced digital storytelling project. He is currently the president of Ball State University’s Asian American Student Association and has held the position for two years running.After college Kyle plans on pursuing a career in either magazine journalism or transmedia storytelling. He has been to Japan twice and plans to one day work there.

HARRISON LANGOHR was born and raised on Bainbridge Island, five miles off the Seattle coast. He has never been far from an inspirational environment. In 2005, he enrolled at Montana State University, and following in his mother’s creative footsteps, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Despite the majestic surroundings of Montana, he grew tired of being landlocked and returned to Washington’s

towering green pines and sparkling water. Since graduation, Harrison has continued work on his senior thesis project: a music, art and culture magazine called HAZ-MAT, as well as a burgeoning freelance career in graphic design and illustration.

xl Contributors

KELLY SHEA grew up outside of Chicago, where she started writing short stories while home sick in the first grade. A multimedia enthusiast at heart, she often added illustrations and soundtrack choices to develop the film potential of these early works. Later her family moved to Carmel, Ind., and after graduating from high school, Kelly enrolled at Ball State University. Her parents, an executive for a winery and a magazine

merchandiser, weren’t surprised when she began pursuing a journalism graphics major, but Kelly eventually moved away from the vice scene and developed a passion for environmental journalism. After Ball State she will be working at her third nonprofit internship as a designer and writer. She only hopes for a few things out of her future career: to travel the world, continue working with passionate people, and never get bored.

RHETT UMPHRESS is finishing his master’s degree in journalism at Ball State University. While at Ball State, Rhett collaborated with Professor Brad King on a number of projects, including Making Transmedia, a forthcoming textbook being written by King and Professor Jennifer George-Palilonis. He worked with a social media team during the shooting of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and co-wrote the companion

book Bunker Hill Extreme: How Seven Days in the Cold, Rain, and Mud Changed a Community. He will be an intern during the summer of 2011 at the Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina. Previously, he was intern at ESPN.com and worked on a social media team for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He will likely be looking for a full-time job when this is published, so feel free to make him an offer.

xliContributors

If you liked what you read, there’s more from our group at our website: http://www.theinvictuswriters.com.

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