Anthony Diaz
Bio
Writer of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, and sometimes Poetry.
Stories (42)
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Codeword: Merlot
I don't know how any of this is supposed to go. It has been almost twelve years and the times have changed. I found her on an app. Or more like she found me. I didn't think anyone would have private messaged me first, but she did. My profile was an open book. I didn't want for anyone to guess who I really was as a person. I even went as far as to list my seasonal allergies. The questions were standard, I didn't hold back when it came to job and personal history either. I wanted to make sure that I didn't beat around bush about who I was and what I do. I was famous enough for my readers, but not famous enough where I could walk in a restaurant and be noticed. It was a perfect blend that I was happy with.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Horror
I Didn't Know I Needed It
I remember sitting at my desk and staring at the computer screen at an empty Word document. The curser continued to blink as I tried desperately to get words from the ether of my consciousness onto the screen to move a part of a story along I have been working on for over two years. I didn't want to grab my phone, but alas the temptation was too great and I jumped into silly videos and ventured into what is considered trendy at the moment. It was easier to scroll nonsense than come up with how I'm going to fix that blatant plot hole. I am not a rich man, nor my wife a rich woman; but I was feeling a little depressed and I tend to shop for things that I don't necessarily need to feel better. Is it validation that I earned that money so I get to spend it? I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that I would fall down a rabbit hole of social media videos of product reviews and tell myself that I do indeed need it. Sometimes you have to splurge a little. So I left my desk and joined my wife in the living room where she sat eyes glued to her phone. I sat at my favorite spot on the L-shaped couch. The back cushions cradled my spine to an almost perfect mold, allowing me to prop my feet up on our coffee table and join her in mindless scrolling. It didn't matter what it was; TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, it is additive and deterred me from being creative and writing my self-proclaimed amazing work of fantasy literature. We swiped the screen and would randomly come across some sort of product review. We were intrigued. We were in the middle of a pandemic and lockdown had us look around our house with a sense of, "this needs to become a project now." One of us would watch the quick video, gain the other's attention and restart it with a "hey look at this, do you think we need it?" The first product to enter our house based on some random people on TikTok were raving about were leggings.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Lifehack
Yay, Spring Cleaning
It is that time again. The time of year where everyone’s nose and eyes are a continuous stream of liquids and that scratch at the back of your throat just doesn’t want to go away. We cram allergy medications to have some sort of calmness from the bombardment of allergens that most of us suffer from. It reminds us one other thing that most of us were forced to participate in as youngsters. The dreaded, Spring Cleaning. You look around your abode and you see that closet corner with totes, shoeboxes, suitcases, U-Haul boxes or whatever you could find at that moment you stuffed random objects and clothes in to set you up for this annual celebration of cleaning out the junk. It is a metaphor, or at least I consider it a metaphor; out with the old and in with the clean. Three or four months after our New Year’s Resolutions we are set to embark on a cleaning rampage that our grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents would nod in approval.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Lifehack
The Karma Book
There wasn't a single soul around young Dominic Carter. His youthful soft brown eyes, yet hardened tanned skin stared at the small stack of two-hundred crisp one-hundred-dollar bills. Flashes of memories from the days prior shook through his head. The strangers he met, the people he helped and hurt; there was a brief pause from his ever-racing mind. When was it his turn to see some type of good fortune? Was this little leather bound black notebook a curse or a blessing? He opened the small book again to the last entry.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Horror
Table Top Role Playing Games
Table Top Role Playing Games, TTRPGs; the immersive fantasy adventure, space exploration, eldritch horror, or dungeon crawl that has helped people escape to a realm full of options and wonder. I'm talking about, Pathfinder, Star Wars, Warhammer, Starfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and of course, Dungeons and Dragons. There are so many more out there, it is hard to keep track and perhaps pick out a new system to try. These games can be really intimidating if you are new. You see weird shaped dice, sheets with weird numbers, and the math; let us not forget about the math. These types of games were rare in my school growing up on a military base. The popular game of the times at my school was Magic the Gathering. I personally didn't get into the card game Magic. I kind of felt like there was too much into it and you had to carry those cards around everywhere you went. (boy was I in for a surprise when I started playing D&D, we damn near carried a library with us) There wasn't a whole lot of interest in something like D&D at a military DoD school at Camp Lejeune, NC. I had known of its existence in the early 90s because, of all things, an after church conversation about it to another kid my age. He started to tell of this guy named Gary Gygax, and how he created this amazing world and you roll a bunch of dice and you kill a bunch of monsters. Parents were told of its association with the occult and Satanism, otherwise known as The Satanic Panic. Being a hardcore practicing Catholic at the time and being around thirteen years of age; it sparked my interest. It was hard to go to local gaming shops and book stores to research this thing called Dungeons and Dragons; until a friend said that their father, a Naval Corpsman if memory serves me right, had a complete book collection of 2nd Edition D&D that he would be willing to let us read. Furthermore, he said that he was able to find most of the books at the base library, while he was deployed. On one Saturday morning, we, five friends, asked our parents for a ride to the base library, located next to a Burger King, the main military exchange (think shopping mall), and my favorite pizza place, Anthony's Pizza, the most greasy slice of greatness you'll ever have. We all asked the librarian, which now I think about it, was a senior in high school at the time, the sister of our classmate. She was beautiful and intimidating as all hell to talk to. We finally got the words out of our mouths and were led to a section in the middle of the library called "Fiction Games." The size of our base library was nothing to laugh at, it was the size of a small elementary school. I remember they had rooms you could check out and listen to vinyl records, cd's, and watch movies on VHS and laser disc. You could have pizza delivered for private parties in the back. You could even check out Sega, Nintendo, and PC games for up to a month. It was all free to military and us dependents. Well anyway, we found the section "Fiction Games" and it was a magical experience. The first book I pulled off the shelf was a book called Dungeon Master Guide. On the cover was a man in a green wizard robe opening a door. The artwork was incredible. The second book I pulled, Players Handbook; and this one had a long white bearded wizard and it looked like it was somehow controlling a winged creature. We. Were. Hooked. We went to check out these books and to our surprise, we were not old enough to take these books without a parent. Because of the stigma surrounding these books, I think I remember you had to be sixteen or older to check them out. Ridiculous right? Well, we stayed and read as much as we could. We looked at everything that were available to us. We came back multiple times and Xerox copied pages of the books for our game we started. All of this started something in me that I absolutely loved, and that was the art of storytelling. I'm thirty-eight years old and I have the same love for these games as I did when I was fourteen. I have started groups, made new friends; games like Pathfinder, Warhammer, Call of Cthulhu have opened my eyes to new stories and adventures.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Geeks
Hard Reset
As we pick up our lives from the surreal events that have happened from the past thirteen months, some of us have to look inward and truly ask ourselves what we need to do with our lives moving forward. Do we say that this is a fresh start? A clean slate from the literal nightmares that were shown on our phones or the television news? I don’t think so; not for me at least. I cannot tell myself that it is starting from scratch because then I would have to ignore all of the things that plagued us as a family and us as a community. Last year I contracted COVID. I can't ignore that I am still feeling the effects of this virus that some people still believe it is nothing more than a glorified flu. It made me really realize where I was in this awkward and often confusing puzzle called life. I wasn't inflicted with it as hard as others; if you had to categorize my experience with COVID, it was mild, but still very scary. Losing the capacity to breathe for small periods of time could do that to a person. I wasn't hospitalized, but after hearing co-workers battle and lose with this virus made me fear the possibilities every single day I had symptoms. The after-effects still need to be examined, but because I experienced that, it made me realize that I wasn't doing as much as I could to make myself or my family happy. I mean, we do as much as we can while quarantined and with limited places to go. Even with most of the establishments in town are now open and you drive by them and shake your head as most are not wearing masks properly, you still have to make do with what you have. I realized that my mental health took a nosedive after COVID. Was it because of COVID? Was it a combination of my past mental health issues from the military? Was it quarantine? Was it worrying about money while all this was going on? I have no idea. All I know is right now, as I write this, I am recovering from a horrible spiral inside my own head. I have battled this before, but for some reason this was ten times worse. I need to work on my mind. The hardest part is recognizing that something is indeed off. Now it's time to work on it. So what did I come up with so far? Well for starters, I am not happy with where I am at professionally. I am at that age now where I start to question EVERYTHING I've done thus far and why it has landed me here at this moment, right now. I can tell you that I am not pleased about it and I am currently making changes. What am I doing? I am pursuing a dream of mine that I had since I was a freshman in High School. I'm trying to start a side career as a writer. Yes, I know. How original. How many people you know keep saying every year this is the year I start writing that novel. I've said that almost every year for the past ten years. Writing something that big is insanely difficult. I know there are those, who I hate by the way, who can write a best seller on their first attempt and get lucky with publishers and marketing and blah, blah, blah. It makes me angry, but we all know that there are some people in this world that don't need to work as hard as others. So I am trying. I actually did write a book two years ago and I'm still working at it, polishing it, finding editors for cheap is not an easy task. I have multiple denial letters from publishers and I kind of wear them as badges of honor. What makes this year different for a fresh start? I have to refocus how I get my work out there. Is this a platform for me? I obviously have no idea, but it is worth a shot. That is what I'm doing. I am taking shots. I can't sit and do nothing and expect that magical publishing fairy to grant me my wish with a book deal. I need to have laser focus. That is why I enter these challenges, that is why I devote time everyday to write. Blogs, social media posts, editing my book; it doesn't matter, just as long as I work. I want to tell stories. I want to describe how an Orc wildly misses a hit to an old wise elven fighter. I want to tell my personal experiences with the military and COVID. I want to give advice about mental health, stress, veteran issues. I just want to write, and hopefully get paid for it. I don't know what will come from any of this, but I know that I want my fresh start to be words on paper.
By Anthony Diaz5 years ago in Motivation
