Ken Fite

March 2018

I meant to send this newsletter out a few days ago. I woke up early, brewed a strong cup of dark roast coffee, and sat down to pen my monthly update to you. Managed to get a few coherent sentences together as the coffee did its job. Clicked send and got a warning message: You’ve exceeded your current plan and now you must upgrade. Went to look at my subscriber count and nearly spewed my dark roast onto my screen.

I’d managed to add about 500 new subscribers to the newsletter since my February update and had to spend some time looking for a new email service to use for sending emails through to you. We’re close to 2,500 subscribers strong now, which amazes me.

I’m THRILLED to have so many new readers aboard! Welcome! I’ll do my best to try and wow you with my Jordan novels and will keep working hard to release two a year.

Now that I’ve ‘upgraded’ my email provider, here’s an update on Blake Jordan #5…

I did my usual thing where I got lot of writing done while flying by the seat of my pants. Kinda like racing a bicycle down the street without a helmet: fun and exciting, but a little dangerous if you’re not too careful. So I decided I really should have an outline so I know where my story’s going and I don’t turn my bike down a dead-end street. Spent a LOT of time playing with these new mini index cards I got, perfect for writing down ideas for plots and subplots and rearranging on a table as you search for your story, but also perfect for wasting time not doing any actual writing or making real progress.

In the end, I had to go back to what has always worked for me: using a single sheet of paper with my 60 chapters listed and only outlining 5 or so chapters at a time as I go. Despite the distractions, I still managed to stick to my goal of writing half a chapter a day. It’s working well: I’m on chapter 14 of 60, so one more chapter until I finish Act 1.

So I’m making really good progress! Thanks for all of your encouraging emails and good thoughts. It definitely worked! My goal is to finish 25% of the novel each month… I didn’t quite make it for Act 1, but I got a lot farther than I would have without the goal.

Last month I wrote about getting started on a big project, whether you’re ready or not. That planning and plotting and thinking through what you need to do is good, but at some point you just need to get going on your dream if you ever want to accomplish it.

This month I want to write about the decision to push forward when things get tough. Because that’s what happens when you decide to go after your dreams: you self-sabotage and find ways to keep yourself from doing the thing you promised yourself you’d do. You’ll try another approach from the one that already works. You’ll hear from experts who tell you you’re doing it wrong. You’ll buy mini index cards and waste a lot of time playing and hemming and hawing and looking for another way to move forward.

Fitting, because that’s what happens at the end of Act 1 of every good story.

The hero’s always presented with two choices. I like to call it the “best bad choice,” because in reality, neither choice is a good one. Take the blue pill or take the red pill. Turn around and go home or step through the threshold and get ready for a wild ride.

As the hero of your story, you should know that once you work on your dream, things will get hard. Someone will tell you to go back home. You may even tell that to yourself. You’re not qualified. You’re not doing it right. You need mini index cards to proceed!

It’s a lie.

Because the truth is, if you’ve started on your dream and come up against a roadblock, it just means you’ve exceeded your plan and to move forward, now you must upgrade.

Whatever dream you’re after, you already have everything you need to see it through.

So go see it through.

Strap on that helmet tight, plan your work, then work your plan. You’re in for a wild ride.

My alarm clock goes off very early in the morning. And every day when I turn it off, I make the one decision that after three years, I still struggle to make–the biggest decision I’ll make that day. Will I go back to sleep and simply ‘exist’? Or will I get up and try to become something more than I was yesterday? You’d think the decision would be easier by now. After all, three years is a long time.

I decide. And when my feet hit the floor, I whisper a short prayer. “Make my life matter,” I say before putting on my slippers, going downstairs, and putting on some coffee before I start to write.

But I’m not just praying for blessings over my writing. It’s bigger than that. I’m praying for my eyes to be opened so I can see opportunities to make an impact on someone else. I’m praying for patience with those I don’t want to deal with. I’m praying for help, not just to get through the day, but to make my day count for something and matter to someone else. I’m praying to be different.

Because it’s easier to fall in line. It’s easier to let life happen to us. It’s easier to wait on the shore, where it’s dry and safe, for our ship to come in instead of swimming out to sea to go after a dream.

One day, we will all look back on our lives and ask: Did I give up on my dream too easily? Did I stand on the shore, watching an opportunity slowly pass me by when I had every chance to jump in, get wet, and grab hold while I still could? We’ll ask, Did my life mean anything to this world?

Because the dreams in our heart really represent a single, important question: Will my life matter?

But I have to remind myself that I don’t need to mean something to this world for my life to have mattered. I only have to fulfill my purpose in it and reach for my dream before an audience of one.

Most people exist. Few of us live. My morning prayer is a reminder to myself that I can’t do it alone, because I need help. I need courage. I need to jump in and grab hold while I still have a chance.

The older I get, the faster life seems to move. I’m ready to make mine count. I’m done playing it safe. One day, my life’s story will flash before my eyes. I want it to be a story that’s worth watching.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, then you might remember me writing about my dream to be on the radio. It was a dream I had since I was about eight years old when my mom and dad gave me a wireless microphone with an antennae that retracted from the bottom that somehow connected to the FM stereo, allowing my squeaky voice to overtake the airwaves like a real-life DJ.

In high school, I’d ride my bike down to the local radio station and apply for an on-air position, then I’d head home, first stopping off at the 7-ELEVEN for a Slurpee and a pack of Now & Laters. (Ha!)

I don’t think it surprised anyone that a few years later–after a lot of hard work and a lot of experience–I finally got on the radio on the now-defunct SHE 100.3 in Orlando, where I spun music from the likes of Matchbox Twenty, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Barenaked Ladies (who, as you might think, aren’t naked and aren’t ladies). It’s hard to believe that was seventeen years ago now.

Which is why I was surprised when I was tucking my boys into bed and I got an alert on my phone from Facebook, telling me that one of my friends who I haven’t spoken with in a very long time had tagged me in a video with Facebook asking if I wanted to share it with my friends. The caption read, ‘Found a bunch of old air checks from the radio station I used to work at. Here’s Ken Fite.’

I smiled, and got my boys’ attention as I hit play so they could hear what their daddy sounded like on the radio and a flood of memories rushed over me from a different time and place. But something unexpected happened as I listened to that old air check of a seventeen-year younger version of myself with my boys next to me, overflowing with excitement to hear their dad as a DJ.

I was crass. I was rude. I made fun of a caller that I put on the air. I played the song she wanted, but only after pointing out that she called every night asking me to play the same stupid song.

“Play it again!” my boys said, not believing they were actually hearing their dad on the radio.

“I can’t,” I lied and told them to close their eyes and go to sleep as I stayed on the bed next to them in the dark, eyes wide open, disappointed with myself and wondering what had just happened.

It was my voice. It was way of speaking. It was my quirky sense of humor. It was definitely me.

And yet, it wasn’t me. Not the me that I am today, at least.

As I stayed there, silent, still thinking, I finally realized what had happened: I had changed.

Little by little, day by day, year after year, I slowly morphed into a kinder, better version of myself. And to be honest, I didn’t really consider myself to be those things now until I heard that old tape.

It made me think about my life as it is today. Every time I mess up, every time I say the wrong thing, react in a way I wish I hadn’t, and I wonder to myself, When am I ever going to change?

But the truth is that I am changing. I am becoming better. Little by little. Day by day. Year by year.

You are, too.

I may not yet be who I need to be, but thank God I’m not who I used to be.

I recently stumbled upon a Facebook post about Thomas Edison that told the following story…

One day, as a small child, Thomas Edison came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He said to her, “Mom, my teacher gave this paper to me and told me only you are to read it. What does it say?”

Her eyes welled with tears as she read the letter out loud to her child. “Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.”

Many years after Edison’s mother had died, he became one of the greatest inventors of the century. One day he was going through a closet and he found the folded letter that his old teacher wrote his Mother that day. He opened it. The message written on the letter was, Your son is mentally deficient. We cannot let him attend our school anymore. He is expelled.

Edison became emotional reading it and then wrote in his diary: “Thomas A. Edison was a mentally deficient child whose mother turned him into the genius of the Century.”

I looked into the story and found that it was mostly untrue. There was never a letter sent to Edison’s mom. But Edison did overhear his teacher say that he was deficient and not worth being kept in school. He told his mother who promptly returned to the school, told his teacher that he was wrong about her boy, yanked her son out that day, and home schooled the boy from that point on.

I wanted to share the Facebook version because, although it’s complete fiction, it still rings true.

Why?

Because, like a good novel that we know is fiction, or a favorite movie that we know isn’t real, we can still learn an important truth: A positive word of encouragement can change anyone’s destiny.

One of the last memories I have of my dad is going over to my parent’s house with Missy, Kyle, and Noah to cook out on the grill. He loved grilling steaks and having us over for dinner.

After the charcoal bricks were lit, and while we had a few minutes until they were ready to cook on, my dad and I sat out on the porch, waiting and listening to the sound of my boys playing inside.

He asked me what was new in my life. I told him about work and the boys. I hesitated, but finally decided to share that I was working on my first novel. I said it was going to be called The Senator.

My dad wanted to know what it was about, so I told him. He asked questions. Lots of them, which I didn’t expect, but should have. He asked me if I wanted to write full time, and I said that I did. I told him that it was my dream. Part of me wondered if I was going to get a lecture on the importance of providing for my family. Or that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Or that maybe I was dreaming too big.

But sitting on that porch, my dad gave me the greatest gift he could have ever given me: he said that he believed in me. He thought that I could do it and was really excited for me. So I kept writing.

Over the next several months, as I neared completion of that first novel, I wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to end. But my father passed away the day before I wrote that very last chapter.

Suddenly, I knew what had to be written and I created an inner drive for my fictional hero that I continue to write about in my novels: to stop striving for success… instead, strive for significance.

In just over a year since I finished that first novel, I’ve written three. They’ve received over 1,200 reviews and I’ve had just as many emails from fans telling me they love them. The readers tell me how much they mean to them. How they stayed up all night and couldn’t put them down. How the characters seem real. How the lesson my hero learns at the end of each book stays with them.

My dad never got to read my book. But he’s in it, along with what he taught me, and always will be.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be a full time writer. But because my dad believed in me, I learned an important lesson in the process: to stop worrying about success and instead, strive for significance.

Chick-fil-A has long been my fast food restaurant of choice. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I take my boys there for breakfast on Saturday mornings when I can. And maybe it’s because when I went through the drive-thru recently at another fast food restaurant, I had a different experience. One you may be able to relate to, a theme that you may recognize from one of your recent visits.

I ordered a large cone. A little sweet treat for getting through another long week. I practically drooled on myself as I approached the window to happily hand over my hard-earned $1.70.

But when I got to the next window to pick up my order, the reality of a fast food world sunk in. “We’re out of cones,” the lady said in a matter-of-fact-couldn’t-care-less tone. “Want a cup?”

I thought about it. Looked in the rear-view mirror at the line behind me. Thought about the money I already shelled out. Thought about the hassle of asking for a refund on a buck seventy. Becoming impatient, the woman raised her eyebrows and lowered her head, nudging me for a response. “Sure,” I finally replied and watched the lady disappear and come back sixty seconds later.

She outstretched her hand and presented a tiny cup with an almost nonexistent amount of ice cream inside. I took it, pulled up as the car behind me took my place at the window, and I realized that the lady hadn’t given me a spoon. So I threw the cup into the trashcan next to me and left.

They could have offered me my money back. They could have given me a jumbo cup, overflowing with more ice creamy goodness than I could have handled. They could have just said ‘I’m sorry.’

But they didn’t.

I was a number. An inconvenient problem to solve with a convenient, not-so-thoughtful solution.

It’s pretty simple, really. All they had to do was care.

What’s sad is that not caring is the norm now and not just in fast food restaurants. It’s everywhere. And if I’m honest with you, I fall into that trap often myself. We all do. Shortcuts are easy to take.

At some point today, you’ll get a chance to not deliver on something that you promised somebody. You’ll be tempted to brush it off. You’ll see an easy way out and will feel like taking it.

Don’t.

Deliver. Give more than you think you need to. Do more than you feel like doing. You don’t need to do a million different things to make a difference in this world. We just need to do one thing: care.

Off to Chick-fil-A.

“How’s your next novel going?” a friend of mine asked this week, referring to Blake Jordan #4, the next book in my thriller series that I plan on writing. It’s the question a lot of my readers have had.

I explained that I’m halfway done outlining and told him how I try hard to outdo myself with each new novel that I write and, because of that, I want my outline to be perfect before I start. I also shared how, no matter how many novels I’ve written in the past, I still feel like I’m standing on the edge of impossible before I decide to commit to the hard work of actually getting the book done.

He just looked at me confused, shook his head, and decided to speak some truth into my life by telling me a story about a conversation between Stephen King and another writer who, similar to me, wanted everything to be perfect before he’d begin. “Just start writing,” was the advice King gave and, in a subtle way, was advice my friend was now giving me. “Even if it’s bad. Just start…”

It reminded me of the debate that happens in any good novel. Shortly after a story begins, there’s a letter that arrives in the mail… or a phone call… or a knock at the door… something that represents a call to adventure for the hero before he decides to go on the journey. The hero debates the call to adventure to show the reader just how difficult the road is going to be, and they also have to reject the call at first, because to the hero, what needs to be done just seems too impossible to accomplish. I’m not the guy for this. I’m not qualified. I can’t do what’s being asked of me are the typical reactions the hero has before deciding to walk through the doorway of no return. But walk through he must. And he won’t return home until he accomplishes that impossible goal.

This morning, I stepped through the doorway of no return. I heard the door slam shut behind me as I passed through. And now, the only way I can ever get back home again, is to ‘just start writing.’

I used to wonder why my wife was so tired when I got home from work every day… that is, until she went away for a weekend and I became ‘Mr. Mom’ to our two boys. That’s when I started paying closer attention to the differences between my days at work and her days at home with the kids. What I discovered was terrifying and should send a chill down the spines of dads everywhere.

Because as I sleep peacefully and uninterruptedly, a miniature assassin often stands at my wife’s side of the bed at three in the morning, waking her up, because he had ‘a bad dream about ants.’

While I decidedly pick out a shirt to wear to work, my wife patiently waits for our eight-year-old to go through every shirt in his closet and ultimately choose a shirt from the dirty basket to wear.

While I listen to music on my drive to work, my wife listens to the joyous melody of the kids screaming and calling each other stupid-heads because they both want to read the same book.

While I swiftly work the five items on my to-do list through to completion, my wife works the first item on her to-do list five times over after being interrupted by demands for more chocolate milk.

While I enjoy a peaceful lunch as I ponder the meaning of life, my wife eats whatever cold, leftover mac n’ cheese that wasn’t flung on our kitchen wall as she ponders the meaning of mom life.

While I go for a relaxing walk before returning from my lunch break, my wife has already buckled our four-year-old into the car seat twice, effectively burning twice as many calories as I have.

While I have a tough meeting at work, my wife has already dealt with a terrorist who threw himself onto the floor because one of his french fries had a brown spot on it, making all other fries inedible.

While I drive home, imagining what kind of delicious meal my wife is preparing for me and wondering just what in the world she’s been doing at home all day, my wife has done the grocery shopping, washed clothes, helped with homework, cleaned and vacuumed the house, successfully negotiated a peace deal between two brothers hell-bent on killing each other, and made us dinner.

Motherhood can be so tough… the screaming… the tantrums… the crying… then there’s the kids!

But trust me, fellow dads, there’s a reason why she’s so tired. Pray that your wife never decides to go away for a weekend, or you’ll get a chance to understand this for yourself. You’ve been warned.

Teacher Appreciation Week starts on Monday and it’s made me think a lot about all of the many different teachers over the years who have guided and shaped me into the person that I am today.

For example, my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Fragé, taught me not to stand on top of tables during quiet time (a lesson reinforced by my parents with a little solitary confinement when I got home).

And at the other end, I learned from Dr. Barringer in my last grad school class how much fun entrepreneurship can be, which I think really influenced me to become an authorpreneur of sorts.

But of all of the many teachers I’ve had throughout the years, my favorite was Mr. Schmaus.

Schmaus was our high school band director. And he put up with a lot from us kids. For example, my best friend used to sneak into his office all of the time, lock the door, and Xerox his derriere.

Then he’d sporradically insert copies into Schmaus’s sheet music when he wasn’t looking and we’d all try to maintain our composure and continue to play whatever music we were practicing for the 937th time, and watch his reaction with both horror and delight as our fearless leader would turn the page he was conducting from, realize that he was being pranked, and try to stay focused.

On another occasion, Schmaus was the victim of a more serious prank, one that could have been deadly. A student had set a pipe bomb in the bathroom one Friday afternoon. Schmaus walked in after a concert, found the string on the floor, and thinking it was trash (???) triggered the tripwire, causing the commode to explode, and sending water and white, ceramic powder everywhere.

That was stupid. Someone could have been seriously hurt — or killed. The student was expelled. And Schmaus added one more tale to his repertoire to recount with his fellow educators.

So, to say that teachers put up with a lot from their students would be a HUGE understatement. But what teachers do best is — well — teach. And sometimes their lessons are less obvious.

Because what my high school band director really taught me wasn’t music…

In middle school, I played trombone. And I sucked — BIG TIME. Years later, I found out that I was coerced into playing trombone “because I had the lips of a trombone player” which wasn’t true. The reality was, the band director just had too many trumpets. But in my heart, I wasn’t a trombone player. I was a trumpet player. So the summer between grades 9 and 10, I bought a trumpet.

And after spending my freshman year as a trombone player, I showed up to band class with a trumpet and sat at the end of a very (VERY) long row of trumpet players our first day back.

Schmaus could have loaned me a trombone (we had plenty… they were in the back storage room… musty and smelly and moldy and used, I guessed, by the countless kids from years past… those whose class pictures lined the hallowed halls of Lyman High School’s band room entrance.)

Schmaus could have said he had too many trumpet players and insisted that I sit out until I agreed that I was a trombone player and sentenced me to go and photocopy reams of sheet music for his top band class, or jazz band, or marching band, and maybe asked me to do one final check for him to make sure no photocopies of human anatomy were hidden anywhere, awaiting his discovery.

Schmaus could have sent me outside to “prepare the marching band practice field” (i.e. pick up trash and put the cones down all over the massive parking lot).

But he didn’t.

Instead, when I sat before my band director, declaring my new brass instrument of choice, Schmaus simply smiled, nodded knowingly, and said, “Okay, Ken. You’re a trumpet player.”

Over the next three school years, I got in top band. I joined jazz band. Schmaus put me in charge of the detail crew. Then he made me section leader. And I won the annual march-off my last year.

Not because I was good, because I wasn’t. I tried hard because Mr. Schmaus believed in me.

Good teachers don’t tell you who you’re supposed to be. They listen to you. They work with you. They don’t treat you like the person you are. They treat you like the person they know you can be.

So this next week, please do something for the many teachers in your lives.

Tell them “thank you.”

Because what my band director taught me wasn’t music. He taught me that it’s okay to take risks… he taught me how to be a leader… and he taught me that I’m capable of more than I think I am.

If you don’t know why you’re thanking them today, thank them anyway. You’ll understand one day.

Thank you, Mr. Schmaus.

For most of my life, I used to think that fiction was pointless. Why would anybody waste their time reading made up stories when they can just read nonfiction to improve their lives? I would think.

I focused on reading nonfiction. That’s what I tried writing, too. But the books that I read lacked soul and came across as preachy. And my own nonfiction, though I think it had heart, didn’t resonate the way I wanted it to, either. I turned back to reading fiction and eventually realized that the really great novels all had a hidden truth embedded inside their stories for readers to discover.

So when I started to write my own novels, I made sure to include important truths in my writing, knowing that the hidden message would have a better chance of being accepted through a story.

Because if I told you there is honor in never leaving a man behind, however that applies to you, you might not believe me. But if you read my first novel, The Senator, you might change your mind.

If I told you that you can’t escape your destiny, the thing you were born to do, you might not buy that. But if you read my second novel, Credible Threat, you might see the truth in that statement.

And if I told you that your past doesn’t define your future, you might disagree and tell me that I have that wrong. But if you read my latest novel, In Plain Sight, you might understand that we all have hard choices that we need to make if we want to escape the shadows of a broken past.

Most of my readers found me through my fiction, but many from my nonfiction days stayed along for the ride. Thank you for sticking with me, but I encourage you to try reading a novel. It doesn’t have to be one of mine, but pick up a book in a genre you think you might enjoy and give it a try.

Because if the writer knows what they’re doing, they’ll take you on a wild ride during the main plot, but the B story — the inner journey the hero goes on — will contain a truth that we all need to hear.