In Honor of Vince Flynn

Vince Flynn passed away this afternoon after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. He was only 47, much too young.

I normally wouldn't post about a death of an author like this, but Vince Flynn has had a profound impact on my life, so I thought I'd pay him my respect.

When I was young, I never had much of an appreciation for reading. I mean, I read the little kiddie books that were in the back of the bookstores and libraries, but that was pretty much it. About the only books longer than a handful of pages that held my attention, were books that were written by Roald Dahl and Louis Sachar, because they were funny and I understood the humor. My mom also tried to read me The Chronicles of Narnia, but I think that was a little too complex, I got some parts of it, but others were just way over my head.

Fast forward to junior high, where I was pretty much turned off of reading because we were "required" to read the books and more often than not, the teacher would choose some really shitty, mushy title that the class had never heard of and didn't give a rat's ass about reading a single page. I always hated this type of reading because it wasn't for pleasure and it wasn't enjoyable for me. When I read, I like to do it on my own time, where there's no pressure to read X amount of pages by such and such a date. I can just take as much time as I please.

Near the end of junior high, I developed a hardcore love for anything and everything science fiction, specifically Star Trek. For about four years straight, that's all I read, literally forgetting that there were other genres besides Science Fiction/Fantasy. However, around the middle of high school, my grandmother, a retired English teacher and opinionated critic of everything literature, didn't consider science fiction to be "real" literature. It sounds stupid now, but being that I was young and wanted to show my grandma that I could read "intelligent" books, I gave up my Star Trek lit fetish and really didn't read much of anything for several years.

It wasn't until 2009 that I discovered the author that would change how I felt about reading forever. I'm also a big fan of well-known thriller authors Dennis Lehane and David Baldacci, but on this particular trip to Barnes & Noble, I was looking for something fresh, something from an author I hadn't read before. That's how I stumbled (literally) across Vince Flynn.

I picked up Term Limits, the first novel he ever published and couldn't stop reading. After finishing the first chapter, I bought it and had it finished within the week. I subsequently went out and bought every book he had written, loving every minute of each book. It was after I had finished two of Vince's books that I discovered that I really *loved* reading again, it simply had to be a book that played to my interests and tastes.

That's why the news of his passing today is a little hard for me. He's literally responsible for letting me re-discover the joys that lie between 200+ pages.

So thank you Vince. Thank you for sharing your fantastic stories with the world. You quite literally changed the way I look at reading. Thank you for bringing a little piece of joy back into my life. May you rest in peace.