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| C. Kevin Thompson |
I just celebrated another birthday. I have to admit that as I check more of those boxes, the realization of having more behind me than before is an ever-present thought.
Enter Stanley Martin Lieber, better known as Stan Lee. Unless you have spent the last few weeks climbing K2, then you have probably heard about the founder of Marvel Comics/Marvel Studios passing away at the age of ninety-five.
Born in 1922 to immigrant Romanian parents, Lee spent his twenty-something years stateside, writing training manuals for the Army Signal Corps during World War II. In his free time, he moonlighted as a comics writer. It would be another seventeen or so years before Lee’s first comic book hit, The Fantastic Four, took center stage. Followed by The Incredible Hulk and Spiderman in 1962, Marvel Comics was well on its way to rival competitor DC Comics for the hearts and minds of “kids” worldwide.
Live action versions of these series didn’t hit televisions until the CBS series, The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby, appeared in 1978.
The movie versions didn’t appear until May 3, 2002, with the first being the version of Spiderman with Toby Maguire. Since then, Marvel Studios has amassed in upwards of fifty billion dollars worldwide from all of the films since that time.
What’s the point? You’re never too old to start something new.
Lee had been drawing comics—ones apparently few people know about to this day—as a moonlighter for around twenty years before the first comic book version of Spiderman released. He published more comics, created new characters, and continued in that industry for almost seventeen additional years before one of his first characters in a series, The Incredible Hulk, was made into a TV series. It would be another twenty-four years before Toby Maguire developed his “Spidey sense.”
Did you keep track of how old Mr. Lee was at each of those junctures in his career? It was this question that made me realize just how “young” I am as a writer, compared to Stanley Martin Lieber, despite celebrating another birthday of my own. It also caused me to pause and consider how much could lie ahead if I just stay the course and keep writing, regardless of my age. Nobody knows if they will ever write their own Spiderman or Captain America or Ironman or Incredible Hulk or Thor or Fantastic Four or Avengers. Nobody knows if they will ever see those characters hit a screen, silver or otherwise. But there are some literary constants in this whole writing business affair:
- Nothing gets published that doesn’t get written.
- Nothing gets transformed into another media that doesn’t get written.
- And age is no barrier to the creative heart and mind. It just may very well be the catalyst.
So, I leave you with this on the day after we celebrated a time of Thanksgiving: Do you have the motivation, the internal fortitude, to stay the course in this writing biz like Mr. Lee? And are you thankful for the years God has given you? And for the years to come? Whatever those years may bring? Regardless of how many remain?
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| The Tide of Times |
(The Blake Meyer Thriller Series, Book 3)
A Perverse Tale. A Precarious Truth. A Personal Tribulation.
Supervisory Special Agent Blake Meyer is at an impasse. Bound and beaten in a dilapidated warehouse halfway around the world, Blake finds himself listening to an unbelievable story. Right and wrong warp into a despicable clash of ideologies. Life quickly becomes neither black nor white. Nor is it red, white, and blue any longer.
Every second brings the contagion's release closer, promising to drag the United States into the Dark Ages. Tens of millions could be dead within months.
Every moment adds miles and hours to the expanding gulf between him and his family. What is he to believe? Who is he to trust?
C. KEVIN THOMPSON is a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a kid at heart. Often referred to as “crazy” by his grandchildren, it’s only because he is. He’s a writer. Need he say more?
The first three books of his Blake Meyer Thriller series are out! Book 1, 30 Days Hath Revenge, Book 2, Triple Time, and Book 3, The Tide of Times, are now available! Book 4, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen, is getting closer! Also, the second edition of his award-winning debut novel, The Serpent’s Grasp, is now available!
Kevin is a huge fan of the TV series 24, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, and Criminal Minds, loves anything to do with Star Trek, and is a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, too. It’s quite elementary, actually.
Website: www.ckevinthompson.com/
Kevin’s Writer’s Blog: www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/
Facebook: C. Kevin Thompson – Author Fan Page
Twitter: @CKevinThompson
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