Confessions of a Starving Mystery Writer

I knew a man named Jerry Ogg that wrote on the Blogisphere as Erik Ivan James. http://erikivanjames.blogspot.com - he was a great renaissance man. He has a completed novel that he was shopping to publishers but hadn't yet gotten pciked up. The following is something he wrote a couple of years ago and sums up the last several months of his life. He was a Veitnam Vet and had been a well repsected legal consultant. He had been to the hieghts of his profession and to the depths of human misery. I loved Jerry and he will be greatly missed. He did good things. "Middle-aged and well traveled in the trenches of human gutters; he wept through his story of hopelessness and despair. He cried over the loss of his soul. He asked if it would ever get better. He asked if he would ever know peace within himself. He asked if he would ever again find dignity. He asked if he could ever again know love. That night, he would destroy the most precious of gifts. He would pinch out the flame on the c

If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn