Everyone multitasks to some extent in daily life, but a local man found a way to kick it up a notch or two when it comes to doing more than one thing at a time.

Stationed in Afghanistan in 2005, U.S. Air Force Capt. Jonathan J. Cartwright was budget officer/commander overseeing an emergency response program with a $136 million budget targeted for humanitarian projects in the beleaguered Asian nation.

At the same time he wrote “Masters of the Stones,” a magical fantasy on the order of the “Harry Potter” series. It was published in November.

“War raged, but military men and women sometimes have quiet time, depending on their assignments,” 30-year-old Cartwright said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he is currently stationed.

“At night I was actually bored,” he said. “Most people watched DVDs, but I decided to write. I wrote over seven months while in Afghanistan, from February to September 2005. The concept came about when I was at Porterville High School and did Dungeons and Dragons story telling. Five to 10 friends got together to play. We got used to telling stories about heroes and villains.

That was in the early 1990s - the captain graduated from PHS in 1994. Cartwright and his youthful friends would gather in a buddy's garage, eat chips, drink sodas and “draw our own characters and everything.”

Friends and fellow players moved on with their lives, Cartwright said, but their early days of play is the foundation of his authorship: Dungeon Master Jim Koontz is now a lawyer, Fred Dohnke is an Air Force pilot, Shane Rapp is a Porterville teacher and Sean Cook moved to Arizona.

Cartwright describes his book as a story “about two wizards, about 18 years old, that just graduated from the school of wizardry.”

He submitted his manuscript to mainstream publishers, but none picked up the story.

“I decided to get it down because I wanted to get it out,” Cartwright said. “I have a couple of stories I'm doing now, but I figured if I self-published it would be easier to be picked up.”

The world of fantasy he created is far from the world that shrouded him and fellow officers during his tour of duty in Afghanistan. It is a country devastated by decades of battles, including civil war and war with Russia, he said.

However, his sister, Porterville teacher Vanessa Reilly, said the distance between war-torn Afghanistan and her brother's fantasy world is maybe not so far.

“I saw similarities in Jonathan's life while in Afghanistan,” Reilly said. “He kept a journal for the 190-some-odd days he was there. I could tell that he pulled from his time there.”

Reilly teaches at Alta Vista, and her eighth grade class read “Masters of the Stones” and loved it. Many of her students enjoy wizards and magic because they like the Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

“My students really enjoyed it,” she said. “They said they felt like they were growing up with the wizards and they could see how kids now would have the same problems today. As soon as I get another copy of ‘Masters of the Stones,' I'm going to put in the school library.”

Her students may not be aware of how fortunate they are to have a school and a library. Part of the money Cartwright oversaw while in Afghanistan went to the construction of an elementary school in a ravaged village.

“We looked where schools and hospitals would be built,” he said. “A translator explained that the people in Pagman Village needed an elementary school. The teacher would teach them in the fields, so they were subjected to the sun and the cold, all the harsh elements. So we built a school for them. That's just one example of the humanitarian activities we participated in.”

Cartwright was never shot at, he said, but was more endangered by “IED,” incendiary explosive devices, planted by the Taliban. He was awarded a bronze star because of having to deal with IED.

“I've seen land mines, and the kids - the kids live a very tough life,” he said. “But I saw a lot of hope in their future.”

Today

After six and a half years in the military, Cartwright continues to live life in layers and levels. He and fellow officers build satellites for communication from their L.A. Air Force base. As financial manager, he is part of a team that maintains a $22 billion satellite program.

Simultaneously, he operates a motorcycle business on the side. When he was at Travis Air Force Base, he had a motorcycle accident while he was showing off on the bike. He was rushed to the ER.

“I'm OK now, but a buddy said, ‘let me customize your bike so you show the bike off instead of you showing off.'”

They have been in business for about seven months, customizing motorcycles.

Somewhere along the line Cartwright found time to earn a bachelor's degree in physical education and a master's in international business - and he ran track at Fresno State.

He laughs when he talks about the dichotomy: “I know that's weird, to have degrees in things so unrelated. It's just that I'm interested in everything.”

His mother, special education teacher Marsha Schott, thinks her son would be better served to settle on one something.

“You know he has expressed an interest in politics and many other things,” she said. “I see his writing as a hobby or pastimes. As a money maker, I don't see it that way. His poetry is beautiful. It's as good as any of it out there. I don't know about his writing ability as far as novels, but poetry he needs to stick with.”

Cartwright expresses everything in his poetry, according to his mother: A relationship that ended, family, Bob Mathias and Afghanistan.

“One that I was really impressed with was about the homeless, a person he sees when he goes to work in L.A.,” Schott said. “He wrote about what he is not doing and what he feels he should be doing to help this person. I just think, ‘boy, he gets deep.' His poetry is dynamite. It shows another side to Jonathan - it shows his depth.”

Contact Anita Stackhouse-Hite at 784-5000, Ext. 1043, or astackhouse-hite@portervillerecorder.com.

This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on March 17, 2007