STAY THE FIGHT! STRENGTH, EFFORT, AND DISCIPLINE. THESE ARE THE WATCH WORDS OF A WARRIOR -- Kevin Michael Vance
Title - Kevin Michael Vance - writer/musician/purveyor of raw materials
STAY THE FIGHT! STRENGTH, EFFORT, AND DISCIPLINE. THESE ARE THE WATCH WORDS OF A WARRIOR -- Kevin Michael Vance
STAY THE FIGHT! STRENGTH, EFFORT, AND DISCIPLINE. THESE ARE THE WATCH WORDS OF A WARRIOR -- Kevin Michael Vance

www.kevacho.com
©2002-2024
Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon


I was born in the year of their lord 1969. A year in which Richard Nixon was inaugurated as President, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and Sesame Street debuted on Public Television. I was born in the city of Billings, a few hours north/west of the sight where Custer held his last, infamous stand. The time had been 7:17, ante meridian. The weather had been warm, dry, and breezy.

For the most part, that is how it started. Nothing special. Nothing unique. My life, essentially, did not begin to, as they say, blossom until my family moved even farther west, deep into the bosom of the Rocky Mountains. To the small town of Missoula, Montana: a fragrant stretch of valley, protected and sheltered by such monolithic sentinels as St. Mary's peak, Lolo peak, and the Rattlesnake Canyon.

The winters there were cold and long, the summers fleeting, yet wondrous, and bright. Here my childhood began... officially. Here is where I rode the backs of bristly mountains. As a meek, small boy, I whispered secrets to the forests of Tamarack and birch, and bled out my youth on the banks of the Clark Fork. I learned the lessons of the wilderness, lessons to which I still desperately cling even as I live and sometimes die inside a burdensome city and a bewildering world.

I learned to live in those tall mountains... learned to dream and imagine... and truly breathe.

I beat my drums, wrote my silly, little stories, and sang my stupid songs. I fantasized of worlds outside of myself... beyond the realm of anything I had yet dared to envision.

I was fifteen when I lost my faith, much to the chagrin of my parents. Begrudgingly they had allowed me to move away for three months, to play in the pit orchestra of a summer musical theatre group in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. In so doing, and rather unwittingly I think, they set in motion the most important three months of my entire life.

I made 60 dollars a week. Lived off Coca-Cola and peanut butter, and matured, as I had never matured before. For some reason, returning from that summer of firsts: first kiss- tentative and clumsy, first drunk- ridiculous and pathetic, first fan- also tentative and clumsy, I returned home with more strength and more direction than I have ever had. Living without my family and their god allowed me to form my own rules, my own precepts, my own faith.

Now, an adult, or dare I say it, a man, I wax romantically, and attempt to live as a warrior, or rather, the ideal of a warrior. Regarding life through three constants, three, as I like to call them, Watch Words- Strength, effort, and discipline.

I wrote my first novel when I was seventeen... in long hand. It took me two years. Even to this day the strange scribbling of my pubescent self are nearly indecipherable. By the time I reached the age of 25, I had written six novels and a plethora of short stories. I am 33 now and I can add to my list of novels six screenplays and a stack of rejection letters.

As far as "jobs" are concerned... well, honestly it's nothing I'm much concerned with. I don't like to think about it... the aspect of "The Job". "The Job" is like a pimp, and I'm its ready-made whore, willing to grovel, to prostrate and vilify myself only to suckle at the meager scraps it offers me. "Jobs", or more poignantly, "THE JOB" is something that for me I have professed to loathe, nigh these thirty-three odd years. It is in fact, as we all know, an evil whose necessity has far outlived its time. But at times, and with much humility, I have been a "bagger", a "drummer", a "mower-of-lawns", a "baby-sitter", a "pizza-thrower", and more recently something I like to refer to as a "copy jock". My "job" has never been me, and I have never been my job. My writing is my "work", and what I have to do to pay the bills is, horrifically, "THE JOB".

To date, I live in Portland, Oregon; a land of bridges and green trees and misting rain and delectable micro-brews. The coffee is hot here, and black as midnight: sweet, dark, elixir of life. The people are kind, if not overly so, and rude, if not so much. Good enough place to live as any. Granted, it is a city, better than most, but just as bad as others. Here in Portland I try my best to live by the Watch Words of a warrior, to love with the open tenderness of a poet, and to write, as much as my callused fingers can muster, with the grace and artistry of the Ray Bradbury's or the H.P. Lovecraft's of the world.

Some years are better than others.


All the screenplays, novels, short stories, and art are copyrighted. None of the content of this website can be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the writer.
   



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