7/17/18
      We've all heard the media say things like "he's the GOAT", or "she's the pound for pound greatest". Claims such as these are debated daily by fans, fighters, and journalists, without any real resolution, because, as Joe Rogan has pointed out on his podcast 'The Joe Rogan Experience', there is no single metric by which we can measure these fighters to determine which one is the greatest.
      In fact, who the greatest is all depends on the person evaluating the fighter. It's all subjective, one opinion vs another. Because really, what constitutes greatness? Is a fighter with an undefeated record greater than one with an abundance of losses? If that's the case, then any amateur fighter with a 2-0 record would be considered greater than UFC legend BJ Penn, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time. Penn's record is 16-12 (as of early 2018), and includes championship belts in two weight classes. Clearly, BJ Penn is greater than a fighter who is 2-0.
      So you can see how the criteria for greatness can overlap, how the waters quickly become muddied when attempting to determine the greatest fighter once and for all. But there is hope! To make a definitive case as to who is the greatest of all time we must examine the entirety of MMA, and to do this we must think back to the inception of mainstream mixed martial arts.
      Let's take it as a given that MMA gained worldwide attention in the mid 1990's, around the time that the UFC and Pride FC debuted. Back then the UFC was considered fringe in the US. I can remember seeing the box for UFC Denver sitting in the 'cult' section of our local video store, right next to 'Faces of Death'. That's how MMA was thought of, as something brutal, savage, taboo. The UFC's shows were banned in many states, and the organization was close to going under before the Fertitta brothers bought the company and gave it a major marketing makeover.
      At the same time that the UFC was having the financial life choked out of it, Pride FC was having it's heyday. A Pride event was a spectacle of the highest order, where sold out arenas, flashy costumes, and pyrotechnics were the norm.
      Pride had the revenue to pay their fighters like movie stars, and the talent rolled into Japan. In the 90's Japan was where the best fighters in the world went. Case in point, Pride 1 featured then undisputed GOAT Rickson Gracie, while UFC 1 featured his unknown relative, Royce.
      Regardless of each organization's success, the sport of MMA was evolving. The 90's was a decade of specialists, a Judo guy vs a Boxer, a Karate guy vs a Sumo wrestler, because before MMA took off that's all there was: a bunch of gyms and dojos around the world catering to specific martial arts and dubbing the rest as inferior.
      Enter Fedor Emelianenko. This heavyweight from the Ukraine came to Pride in 2002, the largest MMA stage in the world, and ran through the open weight heavyweight division with an ease that made him seem invincible. He outwrestled Mark Coleman, he outstruck Mirco Cro Cop, he knocked men out that were almost twice his size. They all fell to his superior talent and killer instinct, a story that unfolded similar to Mike Tyson's meteoric rise.
      But how could this be? How could a chubby, underweight heavyweight be dominating every aspect of the fight game? It wasn't that Fedor was the greatest boxer or the greatest grappler, it's that somehow he knew exactly what to do in every situation, how to create openings where there were none. In short, he knew how to win fights.
      Why was he so far ahead of the game? Simple. Fedor was the world Sambo champion before he ever set foot the ring (Pride used a ring instead of a cage). Sambo is Russia's national sport, a combination of striking and wrestling. Sambo is MMA. Fedor entered his first professional MMA tournament already an MMA champion, and showed the world what a true mixed martial artist looked like.
      This was a wake up call for the fight community. They knew that the only way to compete against a man like that was to abandon the concept of skill specialization. Fight gyms added many disciplines to their training, Muay Thai, BJJ, and wrestling, so they too could be like the unbeatable Russian, so they too could become mixed martial artists.
      Leading up to his fight with Fedor in the Bellator 2018 Heavyweight Grand Prix, former UFC heavyweight champ Frank Mir said that "it's not that (Fedor)'s not as good as he used to be, it's just that everybody else has stepped up their game drastically". In comparing Fedor to Football's Jim Brown, Mir commented that Fedor is "no longer heads and shoulders above those of his era", meaning that, in Fedor's prime, everyone else was far behind.
      No other fighter has had such a profound impact on the sport of MMA than Fedor, bringing it from it's infancy into the modern era, and it's likely that no fighter ever will. MMA is all grown up now. It was Fedor, and later guys like GSP, that changed the sport into what it is today. To compare a fighter of 2018 with one of yesteryear is almost impossible. It was a different game back then, and offered a different set of hurdles to overcome. All we can do is examine what each fighter was able to accomplish with the time they were given in the era they fought.
      And so, if we look at the magnitude of the feats each fighter was able to accomplish in their MMA career, if we use the sum total of their achievements as our comparable metric, then no other fighter can come close to Fedor. He truly is the greatest of all time.

6/13/18
    As it turns out, a major, Major, MAJOR mistake I made was not having this site up before sending 40+ queries. Major. It would have been really good to have the site up beforehand so people would better know who I am. So, yeah, I'd recommend putting your author site up before sending 3 months' worth of queries. But hey, it'll be up for my next time at bat, whenever that may be.
    That isn't to say that having a site has helped, I'm actually writing this before the site has launched, which makes this more of a journal entry than a blog. There's a fine line between a blog and a journal, and that line is online haha
    I also didn't have my name on my email account. I had it backwards just for fun, which stopped being fun the minute an agent called me deraj. "Dear Deraj, ..." Not knocking anyone with the name Deraj, of course, not even sure if it's a real name, but if it is it's a fine name, truly, it just isn't mine.


5/22/18
      I love the Terminator movies, specifically movies 1 and 2, but for many years something has bothered me about the Terminator timeline. Kyle Reece could not have been John's father in Terminator 1. I call this the Terminator Paradox, and it goes something like this:
      Let's start with space and time, which both are commonly held to have started with the big bang. Right? What this means as far as the paradox is concerned is that we are moving forward through time in a linear fashion. The past has happened, the future has not.
      So, in a linear universe John Connor's original father could not have been Kyle Reece, because at that time the future didn't exist, it hadn't happened yet, so there could not have been any time displacement equipment in the future which sent a soldier back in time to protect Sarah Conner. In that original timeline Sara lived in a normal world and became pregnant by a man unknown. Then Judgement Day happened. John eventually grew up and fought for the resistance. It is not known what happened to John's father from the original timeline.
      After Judgement Day John Conner met Kyle Reece in a terminator prison camp. In the original timeline John didn't know he was going to eventually send Kyle back in time. It isn't known why he sent Kyle back originally and not someone else. It was chance. Luck of the draw.
      John sends Kyle back for reasons unknown (LV-426 reference), not knowing that Kyle would impregnate Sarah and become his father. Kyle goes back, hits it off with Sarah, they have a child, whereby altering the original timeline. In this altered timeline Kyle becomes John's father instead of the man who was originally his father. The new timeline can be considered a second timeline because there is no indication that the original timeline didn't continue on as it always had but in some parallel universe. Pardon my digression.
      The John of the new timeline grows up with the knowledge that Kyle Reece is his father. Armed with this fact John gives the picture of Sarah to Kyle, setting into motion the chain of events that will fulfill his own destiny. John sends Kyle back knowing full well he's sending his own father back to sire himself. He may have heard stories about a man his mother knew before the war, but in the altered timeline he doesn't know that that man was his father in an original timeline and not Kyle.
      The Kyle Reece time jump scenario is an infinite loop. Kyle goes back, sires John, John grows up, John sends Kyle back, over and over again, for infinite iterations, or until an event breaks the cycle. But we're living in a linear universe, and in a linear universe all infinite loops must have a beginning, a point of origin, which, in this case, is the original timeline. In that timeline Kyle Reece wasn't John's father. But this information wasn't present in Terminator 1. T1 presented the plot as if it were happening for the very first time. But it couldn't have been happening for the very first time, because this is a linear universe, and the first time around Kyle Reece was a child when Judgement Day hit, and had yet to become a soldier. The original timeline had to play out at least once to give Kyle a chance to grow up, to go back, to fall in love, to sire John, to start the time loop. In T1, Kyle Reece couldn't have been John Conner's father, and that is the Terminator Paradox.


5/16/18
      One book or three? Sounds like an obvious answer, doesn't it? 3, of course. Duh. 3 books = 3 times the money, 3 times the success, 3 times the fame! Turns out it's a little more complicated than that. First time writers have to contend with the fact that no one knows our name. To agents and publishers we're an unknown, a risk, a gamble. A writer who can sell books is proven in their field, so a publisher knows if they print his/her novel it will most likely sell. That's why we see so many sequels in the film industry. It's a proven formula for success. An unpublished writer is a risk, their manuscript is a risk, and 3 unpublished manuscripts are 3 times the risk. For example, what if book 1 doesn't turn a profit but has a huge cliffhanger? Some people will really want to see book 2, but most won't.
      Consider that if my first manuscript doesn't get published then my second won't, because the second book is the sequel to the first. I can't go to a publisher with a sequel when no one wants the first book. So if the first book is a dud, it's sequel will certainly follow in it's footsteps, and the third offering will trail far behind. Now, if your other two books weren't sequels, then you could just start querying the second book when the first flops, then move on to the third book if the second flops. That isn't to say that all your books will be flops, I'm just trying to explore the avenues of the topic, no matter how dark the road. Because, let's face it, some agents receive 500 cold queries a week, and maybe sign 1, so the odds of getting published are rather grim.
      Funny thing is, I started writing book 4 while I was querying book 1, whereby setting myself up to compound my sequel publishing issue 3 fold!!! However, the process isn't over yet, and the future of the Fairytales trilogy has yet to be written. Perhaps an agent will get excited about my series, and love the fact that there are three novels ready to go, because it makes publishing them in a timely manner 3 times as easy. You never know.
      So, is it better to write 1 book or 3 for a first time novelist? It's safer to write 1, less safe to write 3 unrelated stories, and least safe to go for the series. It really depends on how much of a risk taker are you. Personally, I've made a habit of aiming high, shooting for the stars, often not reaching them, then plummeting from such aspiring heights. The higher you fly the farther away the ground, but if you fly toward the stars you might just reach one.

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