C.L. Stegall

So, I was doing some back end main­te­nance this fine Christ­mas evening and “acci­den­tally” deleted my entire web­site, data­base and all. Don’t ask.

Some­times I thank all that is holy that I am a geek at heart and it only took about fif­teen min­utes or so for me to fig­ure out what I did wrong and put every­thing back in its proper place.

Of course, I was hold­ing my breath the entire time.

Merry Christmas…this year you give your­self a heart attack.

Feliz Navi­dad!

It seems to be a strange sea­son for me. Win­ter is fickle and has yet to decide whether she wants to shake off the brisk warmth of fall and dive into the cold. Friends are gone. Friends are fight­ing for their lives. Fam­ily is…well, fam­ily. But, I have a won­der­ful Wife whom I adore, a cou­ple of canine chil­dren who bal­ance on my every word and move, and I’ve fin­ished my first novel.

Christ­mas doesn’t hold the same warmth it used to…it is now much deeper than that for me. Strange how this life works, wind­ing its way through the criss­cross­ing paths of love and faith and friendship.

Some­how I doubt that this post makes any true sense to any­one other than myself, but that’s okay. Par for the course.

Nev­er­the­less, I wish each and every one of you a Merry Christ­mas and a truly won­der­ful New Year.

When I meets some­one for the first time I can, for the most part, deter­mine if they have ever served in the mil­i­tary. You see, I spent the first ten years of my adult life as a sol­dier. I have found that the major­ity of Amer­i­cans have lit­tle idea what an aver­age mil­i­tary per­son does, what they go through, what they endure for the sake of their own safety, the safety of their peers and for the safety of their country.

Every sol­dier, sailor, marine, air­man, and guards­man — male and female — have each shed blood, sweat and tears in the line of duty. It may not have been in a com­bat zone, but the facts remain. Blood, sweat and tears. In my own capac­ity, I have run until I thought I would pass out, and I kept going; I have bled, both will­fully and con­se­quently; I have car­ried the wounded and trained for much worse; I have guarded both prop­erty and oth­ers backs; I have sweated in the jun­gles of for­eign nations and in the dirt of Amer­i­can soil; and, I have cried — in frus­tra­tion, in pain, in anger, for those we saved and for those we lost.

I know what it means to sac­ri­fice, to not give a sec­ond thought to giv­ing up your free­dom or body for the mis­sion. In the end the mis­sion is always the same: pro­tect. Pro­tect your­self, pro­tect your peers, pro­tect the inno­cent and pro­tect the secu­rity of our great nation.

To learn all of this, to take it all in and let it become a part of you, of who you are, is to be bro­ken down and built back up. It is to be noth­ing. It is to become some­thing greater. It is to give all and expect noth­ing in return — because that is who you are. It is who you will always be.

Hav­ing gone through it, hav­ing accepted all of the con­se­quences of being noth­ing and then becom­ing some­thing greater, for a greater pur­pose than self…I know when I meet another who stood in my shoes, upon whose shoul­ders that weight of respon­si­bil­ity also rested.

I once told my sis­ter that I had said good­bye to more friends than she had ever known. Those were words spo­ken in pride and sad­ness, both.

To those I have known, to those I have called com­pa­triot, to those I have called friend, to my broth­ers and sis­ters in arms, know this: I salute you for all you have been and all that you are. I salute you for all that you have given and for all that you sac­ri­ficed and con­tinue to sac­ri­fice. I salute you for hold­ing me up when I fell and for mak­ing me laugh when I hurt. You will always have my love and respect. Because you damned well deserve it.

I’ve always loved a good hor­ror novel. I’ve a lot of hor­ror writ­ers who I admire, as the genre has always been a dif­fi­cult one for me. Now that I have a lit­tle time while the novel is in the editor’s hands, I have been toss­ing about a cou­ple of ideas for hor­ror shorts — exclu­sively for this site.

One begins with a girl who gets kid­napped and swept away for tor­ture by very very bad man. But, you see, I have always had a thing for strong women who sur­prise. So the end­ing of this tale will not be what any­one at all expects. :o) The other one is more along the lines of what I’m used to writ­ing, only with a hor­ror twist. I’ll decide today which one I want to do.

I should have a first draft this com­ing week and then final­ize it by the start of my vaca­tion (to which I am SO look­ing forward).

Lat­ers!