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we need to talk

Martin Luther King day, 2021

I don’t often speak about Dr. King on this day we set aside to honor him because I would rather the microphone is passed to those who are still fighting the battle that took his life. It seems disingenuous to me the parrot his words, no matter how wise or eloquent they may be, sitting here in my white skin and privilege in a country that still devalues BIPOC.

The amount of hatred and anger I see in my fellow white Americans toward people they have never met for nothing more than the color of their skin shames me. The white supremacy on display in our nation is disgusting.

This week we will see a black woman take the second highest seat in our country, and I have no doubt that she will be hated just as much as President Obama was. She could single handedly solve the climate crisis, find a cure for cancer and eliminate poverty and she would still be hated. Because of the color of her skin.

The man leaving the white house this week has whipped these people up into a frenzy that has thus far culminated in death and defecation in the home of our governance. He has allowed over four million Americans to die from a virus by not taking action that would have prevented it from getting so bad. He has laid out no plans for vaccine distribution. He forced states to struggle to find and buy PPE for front line workers. He sent unidentified thugs in uniform to terrorize people who only want the police to stop executing them for the color of their skin. He has pardoned the most appalling people (and plans to pardon more). He has spent millions of dollars playing golf.

I could go on, but there would be no point. Instead, I’ll turn this back to Dr. King. We haven’t yet become the nation he dreamed of, where black men and women stand on equal ground with us white folks. All these years later and we are still waging that battle. It is a battle we must ultimately win, friends.

Because, black lives matter. Today and everyday.

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what a week

Like most Americans, my attention has been firmly on our nation’s capitol this week, as law enforcement investigates the uprising at the capitol and congress worked to hold the president responsible for inciting that violence.

I’ll admit that it has not been great for my creativity or productivity!

That said, I did finish the zero draft of the second Blood Witch book over the weekend. Up next will be an editing pass to flesh out a few scenes and retrofit some story points that developed near the end.

For as long as I have been writing, my characters can still surprise me. Going into this book, I knew the plot points I wanted to hit, at least in the beginning and middle. The ending changed multiple times while I was writing, and a relationship developed between two characters along the way, which I now have to go back through and lay the breadcrumbs in.

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with reaching the end of the book, even though I know there is still work to do. It was a victory I needed this week.

Now though, I need to finish my coffee and get on with the day job. I hope you are all safe and well, Readers and that you manage to find joy in these chaotic and dangerous times.

Cover Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

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the mirror

On January 6, 2021 the United States of America came under attack. This attack did not come from some foreign enemy. This attack did not come from radical Islam. This attack did not come from “antifa”.

This attack was perpetrated by our own homegrown, right-wing, “Christian” radicals.

This attack was enabled by law enforcement.

This attack was an attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States in order to seat a dictator, an attempt directed by that would-be-dictator. This man stood at a podium and told this mob of devotees to march on the capitol and fight.

There was no widespread voter fraud. No ballets were “dumped”. No machines changed votes. The few cases of fraud that have been found were people voting for the would-be-dictator for their dead relatives.

The only reason people believe that there was fraud, that this election was irregular, is because the would-be-dictator told them there was.

This was not a protest asking the government to “please stop killing us for no reason” or to demand justice for vigilantes with badges to be held accountable. This was a base of people who have been continually lied to, regularly riled up in an “us against them” mentality and launched at an institution of the United States because one man wants to be king.

Like all cults, this may have started out as a fringe group of mostly harmless whackos, but the time has come for us to intervene. It’s time to bring in the deprogrammers and rip out the core of this cult before any more Americans are injured or killed.

I am reminded of this poem I wrote all the way back in 1992:

The Mirror

in the maddening chaos
of a wicked, walled-in world
where bigots rule the masses
their hate like flags unfurled
a generation’s genocide
comes off without a hitch
as the hatred born of pain and doubt
climbs to a fevered pitch
building through the centuries
of prejudice and fear
growing in the decades
of trials and treasured tears
the madness swirls and eddies
like the ocean’s tides and waves
feeding like a cancer
on the terror it creates
it seethes beneath the surface
just barely out of sight
waiting for the moment
it can slip into the light
a cold, dark hand, like death itself
slinks slowly from the dark
to reach into the shaded spot
found at a nation’s heart
as daylight dawns, the aftermath
finds a country on its knees
gazing into its history
bared for all the world to see
we sit in utter silence
star in shock at what we see
for the horror in that silence
is the mirror in front of me

As always, I hope you are staying safe and sane, Readers. I love you.

Cover Photo by ElevenPhotographs on Unsplash

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melancholy moments

I haven’t been writing much, obviously including here on my blog. I’ll be real honest and say that living has been hard recently. I have found myself feeling heavy and unmotivated.

I know everyone is feeling it. Six months of living in crisis mode is wearing us all down.

Then came the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed from this life and I am not ashamed to say that I was dragged into a deep dark hole. Everything felt hopeless and dark and like the country I love had taken that last step out of the light, out of the promise of who we are meant to be and we are now tumbling headlong into the abyss, driven by avarice and greed.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Honestly, as an author, had I presented a story like 2020 to an editor, I would have been told that it was not believable. Pick a single plot and stick with it, would you?

I spent Saturday in grief-cleaning mode. When everything is out of your control, control what you can, right? When I spiral down into the land where anxiety borders on depression, I tend to just let stuff go…I don’t clean, I don’t eat properly, I forget to take my meds. You know, stuff like that. Climbing back out looks like cleaning, preparing actual meals and setting reminders on my phone to take my meds.

So, here we are back at Monday. I’ve been awake since 2:30 am, I’m drinking coffee and trying to find the light. There are still things I can’t control, but I’m going to start controlling what I can. And one of those things is voting my conscience, voting for stepping back from the abyss of the last four years. I can’t help those who hate, those who are determined to believe that the last four years have been good (what value of good are they using anyway?).

All I can do is love hard enough and bright enough that the hate retreats in shame. I love you, Readers! I’m not a really huggy person, but I’d hug you all right now if I could. Remember, it’s okay to step back, to disengage when it’s all too much for you. It’s okay to cry, to rage, to just withdraw. Just remember to get back up again and step back into the fight.

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gonna have a star war!!

This has not been the best week for me mentally. Between the bad air quality and the ongoing public health crisis and all of the election hoopla, and the fact that I should have been at Disneyland last weekend, I was feeling pretty down for the better part of the week.

The air is marginally better yesterday and today, and a series of workplace wins has helped me feel a little bit more myself. We’re almost up to September, which is my birthday month, and that’s usually a pick me up.

Add to that some Star Wars related news in that the only video game I play with any regularity, the SIMS 4, is releasing a “Journey to Batuu” game pack in time for my birthday, and we’re planning a Star Wars related photoshoot with my family sometime soon, and that’s got me feeling a little more like me.

I’m hoping that the weather stays nice and the smoke stays away enough to get my house cleaner than it has been this weekend. It’s been hard to do physical work when I can’t breathe for the heat and smoke.

But now I can see that my software update is finished so I should get myself back to work. Stay safe, Readers! And happy almost weekend.

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an act of treason

July 4th is a celebration of an act of treason. An act of dissent. The original event, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was only one such act. The colonies had already been at war with their sovereign for some time. They had already convened a Continental Congress once to bring the colonies together and lay down plans for governance and to bring grievances from the colonies to the ear of the king, among other things.

The second congress was convened and from that congress came the Declaration of Independence, essentially a written FU to the king. These Americans were fed up, done with being the king’s dogs. So they rioted.

They started a damn war. They felt cornered, like they had no choice.

Sound familiar?

Sound like anything going on in our country today?

I keep hearing people saying that the Black Lives Matter movement is not going to get the changes they want unless they are “polite” and “protest the right way”…whatever that way is. But that isn’t how the world actually gets changed. We’ve spent two hundred years treating black and brown people far, far worse than old King George treated the colonies.

You think they don’t deserve to rise up and make their own declaration? You think they don’t have reason to destroy the property of the overlords? Is it going to take a war? A revolution?

Think that’s unAmerican? Think that’s treasonous? They aren’t even looking to create their own country, they just want to be treated like people, equal to and considered the same as white folks, by white folks.

That kind of treason is where we come from. An act of treason should not be necessary, a war should not be necessary, for us to recognize the problem inherent in our history and our present so that we can forge a better future.

And those are my thinky thoughts on this July 3rd. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

All men are created equal and entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. All men. All.

And on that note, I shall leave you and head out to the living room to start work on Job #2. Have a nice long weekend, Readers. And contemplate the rights which are unalienable.

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slow Sunday mornings

Is there anything better than a slow Sunday morning with coffee and cuddly kitties? I even managed a little bit of a sleep in. I mean, I was awake at 5:30am, but managed to hush my mouthy cat and go back to sleep for almost two hours. It was lovely.

So much of life right now isn’t lovely, so it feels like these little things matter all the more, you know?

It seems like everyday the news gets worse and worse, and there’s so little we can do about it. Here in the US we never completely broke the back of the first wave of this corona virus, and now we’re getting slammed by the second, or maybe just the revenge of the first.

The more we discover about how this virus attacks the human body, the scarier it seems.

I know I’ll breathe easier once I get paid on the 1st. I’ve been without money for so long, and it just presses in on all the rest of the anxiety. It’s significantly less money than I was making before, but I will never have a daily commute, so that’s a plus. I imagine that once the current economic environment improves, so will my pay.

So many people have it harder that I feel bad for feeling bad for myself, which I know is ridiculous. This isn’t a competition, and none of us need apologize for how we are feeling.

How are you doing, Readers?

Cover Photo by Mike Kenneally on Unsplash

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black lives matter. period.

There seems to be a sense of expectation hanging in the air, at least here for me. Some of that is the fact that after months of unemployment, I will be starting not one new job on Monday, but two! I pretty much won’t have a life here for a while, but neither of them pay what I’m accustomed to and combined they might just let me climb up out of the hole I find myself in financially.

Add to that confirmation that an event I had been looking forward to in August is still happening (at least at this moment…who knows what the future will bring…but it IS in Texas, so…yeah, no idea how that will affect things), and I am cautiously hopeful.

With so much wrong in this country right now, with death and dismay all around us, it feels good to have something to look forward to. But, we have to remember, this pandemic isn’t gone. And, we are sure to see spikes in the numbers going forward, with so many bodies out there protesting, with businesses opening, with so many people just acting as if now that we have a new threat, the old one is gone.

People are still dying of this virus. Which in no way means that I do not support the protests or my black brothers and sisters. I totally understand their choices, because if your choice is a slow, agonizing death or a fight to prevent senseless, violent death? I’d choose the latter every time.

I wish I had what it took to be out there with them, but I’ll be honest, between my agoraphobia and my immuno-compromised system, I break out in a cold sweat just looking at the pictures on my TV.

My new jobs will help me stay home too, since they’re both work from home. It means a lot of stuff I might normally be doing gets put on hold, such as writing. Today and tomorrow might actually be the last few days I have to get words out of my head and down on paper for the next few months.

So I should probably get on that…and make more coffee! Remember, Black Lives Matter. Kindness Matters. Love Matters.

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quoth the raven, nevermore

Are you as bored as I am, Readers?  You are probably tired of blog posts about the virus and how we’re coping.  I get that.  So, here’s a video I did yesterday with me all dressed up and reading some Edgar Allan Poe to start us off.

In other news, I’m trying to get my juices flowing to start working on The Blood Witch again.  Yesterday I tried printing it out to make notes and what-not the old fashioned way, but I ran out of paper, and since it isn’t strictly necessary, I guess I’m back to doing this on the computer.

I got some great feedback from my beta readers, and hope that their notes will help me take this thing to the next level.  I really love this story and these characters.  I can’t wait until I can share them with all of you.

I’m going to plug my YouTube Channel and my Author’s Page on Facebook here.  All of my live readings will be done on the Facebook page, so give it a like to stay up to date and to get notified when I go live.  The YouTube channel will host the recordings of those readings after the live reading is done.

All of this reading of poetry has also kickstarted my poetic muse, and I’ve been scribbling away.  Maybe I’ll come out the other side of this with a whole new book of poetry for you!

Stay safe, Readers!  And Happy April.  Let’s hope it isn’t as long as March was.

Cover Photo by Kasturi Roy on Unsplash

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the last stand

I haven’t really talked enough about Where Shadows Fall. I struggled a bit with getting this book done, maybe in part because I knew it would be the end of my living in that world, at least for a while.

The grand finale takes place in Washington D.C., which I think was rather inevitable, given what we know about the man pulling the strings.  I didn’t set out to have a meglomanical bad guy.  In the beginning he was just a guy who believed that Others were evil.  Clearly, I maintained some of that in the overall story however.

To me there is nothing as frightening as a person who believes without doubt, someone who fears that other for no concrete reason but because they have been told to believe. They can’t be reasoned with. No argument will penetrate the protective barrier of that belief mixed with fear and hate.

I always thought that it came from religion, from man’s need to control mankind’s access to gods and the power that came with that.  However, as we can see in America today, it doesn’t have to come from within religion.  It need only wrap itself in the cloth that resembles religion to draw people in.

I find that terrifying.  Maybe that’s why the 8th Battalion became one of the big bads in these books.  It certainly drives the character of Colonel Shallon.  Blind belief is a dangerous weapon.

That is where my thoughts are today, Readers.  I hope yours are more pleasant on this cold, January Saturday.

 

Photo by Ji Pak on Unsplash