Monthly Archives: November 2024

November 22, 2024 · 4:18 pm

Me against the world. Guess what, the world won.

My plan for this week had been to work three days on Southern Discomfort, one day on a story for The Local Reporter, then the fifth day for blogging and email. Life, however, got in the way.

Wednesday I had a dentist’s appointment. This was good as I’ve been having a lot of temperature sensitivity in my teeth which can be a sign of bad troubles. Nope: just too much placque around the gumline, which i shall work to expunge now. Otherwise my teeth are great.

(It is, as they say, beginning to look a lot like Christmas).

But that took a chunk out of my morning, followed by watching a three hour Carrboro Town Council meeting online plus a couple of interviews for upcoming stories. Which pushed my schedule out so that I didn’t finish my article on a local development until Thursday morning. When we had the housecleaners coming in. And while I’m happy to see them, they do make it hard to focus on anything creative, so I concentrated on blog posts and email after that.

Today would have been my chance to catch up …but I had to take the car to the dealer for a couple of minor problems. That left me with the choice of Lyfting back (more time out of the day)and then returning or working there in the waiting room (not the best environment but more time). Suffice to say, I didn’t get much done.

Glitches in the Amazon KDP process for printing paperback copies of Ceaseless Way meant I had to do more work on that, too. Surprisingly I and my collaborators (Secily Luker fixed the cover size) made it through. It has finally cleared the approval process and will be available Nov. 29; however it’s available for pre-order in ebook.

I did get some work done on Southern Discomfort but I’m not sure it’s enough to finish by Thanksgiving. Disappointing. In fairness part of that is because rather than the straight proofreading I should be doing I kept going through and purging words I’ve overused. “Somehow,” for instance, appears in a lot of sentences where it’s not necessary.

I did, however, call both my senators to request blocking RFK Jr. from a cabinet post. Putting that ignorant and extremist man anywhere near health policy and regulation will get people killed; with Matt Gaetz gone, I figured Kennedy was the best target (I’m trying to concentrate my firepower). I don’t know either Tillis or Budd will cross The Felon but I’m going to keep asking.

And I got three stories in at Atomic Junk Shop. One on a couple of Marvel’s late-1960s experiments (not successful), one on how good I’ve become at figuring out Silver Age Twists (as in this Action Comics with the Curt Swan cover) and one on the Spider-Man arc I call the Tablet Saga.

Oh, well. Like it or not, taking care of teeth and cars has to be a higher priority. That’s life.

Rights to all images remain with current holders. Ceaseless Way cover by GetCovers from concepts by Arden Brooks

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November 22, 2024 · 5:05 am

Another date, another museum, more photos

A few weeks back TYG and I made one of our visits to the North Carolina Museum of Art to catch their Venetian and Samurai exhibits. They also had an interesting display of portraiture, grouping classic art with more recent images.

There was samurai armor —

And a sword. Writing on the tang was normal — the hilt would be replaced several times over the decades as the sword was inherited by new generations.

In the Venetian exhibit we saw a Titian

And what high heels looked like in Venetian times.

I’ll wrap up with Archipenko’s sculpture, Blue Dancer. It’s neat.

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November 21, 2024 · 5:16 am

Some links about religion

“At least 10 individuals have made sexual abuse or sexual misconduct allegations against Rivera, who is now on trial in Kane County, Illinois, on charges of felony sexual assault and predatory abuse of a victim under 13 years of age. Rivera also faces charges for two felony counts of criminal sexual assault of a separate alleged adult victim.

Ruch is on leave after admitting he made serious mistakes in handling the abuse allegations against Rivera, including failing to initially tell members of the Upper Midwest Diocese about those allegations.”

“This constant reminder that “you were foreigners in Egypt” is not only a bit of persuasion. It’s also a threat. You were foreigners in Egypt and you were mistreated, despised, and oppressed. You remember that. And you also remember what happened to Egypt because of it.” — Slacktivist on Christianity and immigration.

“From religious communities to therapeutic spaces, the importance of forgiving those who’ve wronged us is often enshrined as an unqualified good. But what about horrifying cases of abuse, predatory behavior, or systemic wrong? Too often, when predators or abusers are exposed, the chorus comes immediately: “What about forgiveness?” In these cases, forgiveness places the onus on victims, diminishes real hurt and anger, lets perpetrators off the hook, and prevents justice from being done.”

Also from Slacktivist, on the same subject: “And as for “Heaven Has a Gate [and] a Wall,” well, yes, the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation does include a wall and a gate — twelve gates, actually. And here is what it says about that: On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.”

“The liberalism on which the United States was founded in the late 1700s came from the notion—radical at the time—that individuals have rights and that the government generally must not intrude on those rights. This idea was central to the thinking of the Founders who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who put into the form of a mathematical constant—“we hold these truths to be self-evident”—the idea that “all men are created equal” and that they have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as well as the right to live under a government of their own choosing. ” — Heather Cox Richardson (yes, her substack letter also discusses religious freedom)

“From the pulpit to a prison cell, 37-year-old Demiro Rick Johnson will be 71 years old when he is released from prison and required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his natural life, according to court documents obtained by The North Carolina Beat. On Friday, a judge sentenced Johnson, a now–convicted child sex predator for the statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl, whom he referred to as his “spiritual daughter” and who had attended his church.” Yes, it’s true predators and rapists exist in secular environments, but when the right wing starts pretending Christianity will elevate our moral discourse … well, it doesn’t.

See also: “A Triad pastor was charged with groping a man at Walmart, according to officials with the Mebane Police Department. On Monday, around 9 a.m., officers with the Mebane Police Department responded to the Walmart, located at 1318 Mebane Oaks Road. Jeffrey Smith, 67, was arrested and charged with one count of misdemeanor sexual battery. According to the arrest warrant, Smith was accused of approaching a man at Walmart and “touching the victim through his clothing.””

“These new leaders instead anticipate that the church will have to fight like (and against) hell to bring God’s kingdom to the earth, because Satan and his demonic minions will never cede the world without a fight. Victorious eschatology is optimistic about the future, but that optimism is premised on its adherents’ willingness to bring spiritual war to all non-Christian culture.”

Rep. Mike Johnson talks a lot about his Biblical worldview and his Christian morality. But he’s fine providing cover for alleged sex-trafficker Matt Gaetz.

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November 20, 2024 · 5:15 am

Ceaseless Way: an author interview

As part of our promotional effort for Ceaseless Way (now available for preorder — more sites to follow) my fellow contributors and I are interviewing each other. Here’s my Q&A for Ada Milenkovic Brown:

What are your stories in Ceaseless Way about?

“In Valleys Where Eternities Lie” is based on a German short story written in the 1800’s about a village that only appears for one day every one hundred years. In my story, a man living in Communist East Germany is obsessed with finding this village as a way of escaping the dystopia he’s living in. He does find it, but gets in trouble with the authorities because the villager he falls in love with has the power to send people forward or backwards in location or time when she’s upset.

“Nnn’s Children” concerns a teenage female Bigfoot who is trying to survive near future climate change while on a spiritual journey to learn what her role is for her people.

What inspired them?

“In Valleys” was inspired by me being in a production of Brigadoon, which like the German story I based my story on, is about a time traveling village and a villager falling in love with a modern person. The German story, which was published in 1860, is called Germelshausen and was written by Friedrich Gerstäcker.

How did you like working in a collaborative anthology?

I am very proud of the project we’ve put together. I hope we will continue to put out more of these.

Why should someone pick up a copy of Ceaseless Way?

You will be moved and entertained by the characters and situations you find in these pages.

What does “pilgrimage” mean to you?

My understanding of a pilgrimage is a journey with a religious connotation and such journeys are found in different religions. I think one can extend that to journeys that have any kind of spiritual or self-discovery element. With that definition, this probably encompasses all the journeys in The Ceaseless Way.

How did you become a writer?

I think I’ve always been a storyteller, and gradually grew into being a writer so I could share the stories with other people. Most of my ideas tended to fit within what we call speculative fiction, probably because my dad invented a robot, and my mother acted out fairy tales with me when I was young. She also took us to the planetarium a lot, and when they showed us the constellations, that there were story characters in the night sky, it blew my mind, and I was hooked. I bought a book of Greek mythology and never looked back. Later I took writing courses and workshops, including Clarion West and Taos Toolbox, and joined writers groups.

Tell us about your past stories/

Hmm, how long have we got? I have nine published short stories, but I’ll just tell you about four of them to give you a flavor of what I write about:

“Wisteria”— A widow becomes obsessed with her backyard gazebo because she sees the ghost of her gardener husband in the wisteria he grew in it.

“Nadirah Sends Her Love”— In an alternate history where the Mideast has the role of the US, and America is a bunch of fundamentalist Christian conclaves, a physician gets in trouble for treating a woman who has toxic shock syndrome from wearing a chastity belt, which all women in her community must wear when not alone with their husbands.

“Vodnik Laughter”— a musical prodigy in 1700’s Prague hears the river mermen taunt her when she plays the piano, as they try to capture her soul.

“Lover’s Knot” — A couple bring the quilts they slept under as babies to an old mountain woman so she can sew them into lap quilt, which will then tell the future of their love. I used traditional quilt pattern names as the jumping off point for the plot of the story.

What’s your life away from the keyboard?

I’m a microbiologist and taught that at what is now the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. I also studied voice and acting and sang at weddings, funerals, and as a vocalist in a swing band and acted in community theater. When I had children I switched to volunteer teaching, training tutors of adult literacy and English as a second language. I retired from teaching about eleven years ago, but I’m still singing and acting. My husband and I like to hike and bicycle.

What’s been the best part of working on Ceaseless Way?

Watching it grow up into a book. I’m proud of what we’ve created.

What’s been the biggest challenge?

None of us collaborating on this book had ever edited and published an anthology before, and it took us awhile to get our feet under us with it.

Anything you’d like to add that I haven’t asked?

I’m currently revising a novel called Fairytale Hell. It’s Inception meets either Princess Bride or Into the Woods, the story of a med student caught up in a boating accident who wakes up as the princess in a fairy tale. She realizes the prince in this world is a patient she heard about in class who is about to have his life support removed. It’s then a quest to fight off paranormal dream control, dragons, and fairytale minions (not the yellow kind), while seeking a way to bring the “prince” back to wake up in his body before he gets unplugged.

There you have it! Here’s Ada’s website. Cover art by GetCovers, based on concepts by Arden Brooks.

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November 19, 2024 · 8:32 am

The story behind the story: Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I have two stories in Ceaseless Way, the anthology coming out on Black Friday. Here’s the backstory on how I came to write Impossible Things Before Breakfast, though it’s been long enough I admit I’ve forgotten some of the details.

The germ of the story was the mental image of a man sitting and typing on a Mac laptop that they were stuck in 1970 with no way home and they hated it. I had no idea who the guy was or how he got there, and the image never made it into the story.

What started me trying to write it was reading various commentaries on time-travel stories while working on Now and Then We Time Travel. Some reviewers vented that if a time-traveler doesn’t reveal the truth about themselves the whole reliationship is bogus — how can love be real if they’re hiding stuff like that?

I don’t feel the same way, at least for fiction but it sparked the opening scene: my protagonist, Hal, finally tells the truth to his lover Susan. He does it even though he knows she’ll never believe him: his time machine disintegrated and he can’t think of any historical event to predict before Watergate and Roe v. Wade.

Instead, Susan levitates her ashtray. She’s totally used to weird people: pretty much everyone at the bookstore she works at is weird. Cyborg. Alien. Mage. Hal’s just one more.

Then I had to start thinking about why this bookstore existed and where all these strange types came from. In the early drafts this led to a lot of discussion which slowed down the plot and wasn’t that interesting. You learn about some of the backstories, briefly, but only a little.

I didn’t have any success submitting it. When my friend Kat Traylor proposed Ceaseless Way with a pilgrimage/wandering theme — well it was easy enough to work that with a guy who’s wandering in time.

Then came the critiquing, editing and recommendations. I took some of them to heart and made the relationship between Susan and Hal stronger and changed the explanation of how it shapes the final outcome. On the other hand, some of my co-contributors wanted more backstory on the Nothing Men; I thought they worked better with none.

And now it’s coming out at last. Woot!

All rights to images remain with current holders. Ceaseless Way cover by GetCovers based on concept by Arden Brooks.

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November 18, 2024 · 2:05 pm

Mandates are a myth

While it’s important to remind people how extreme the Republican Party has become, I no longer feel it’s worth cover all their monstrously extreme statements. Not that I ever have — I’d have to post a lot more often — but I bookmark a shit-ton of stuff that I never get around to discussing. And as I’ve said previously, while their policies are bad, a lot of their rhetoric is now same-old, same-old. Shrieks of outrage they have to share the country. That everyone hasn’t already bent the knee to Glorious Supreme Leader Trump. Etc.,Etc. The latest lie about immigrants, Democrats, gays, etc.

However some of the lies are worth nothing, such as Republicans declaring Donald Trump has a mandate. Rep. Mike Johnson’s said because Trump has a mandate, we should accept all his candidate appointments — the people have spoken! Marjorie Taylor Greene is shocked—shocked—Democratic governors are “threatening the upcoming Trump administration’s mandate by the American people.” We’ll hear more about this soon.

Like the title of this post says, mandates are bullshit. I realized this in 2004 when W won re-election. Lots of conservatives declared he had a clear mandate from the voters but none of them agreed what. It was to clean up filth in the media! No, it was to slash government spending! To keep the war going in Iraq! Then it occurred to me that when W lost the popular vote in 2000, nobody on the Republican side claimed “well, he doesn’t have a mandate, he should compromise and reach out to the majority who didn’t vote for him.”

Trump won. That doesn’t mean everyone who voted for him supports his policies or that it’s wrong to oppose them: continuing the opposition is legal and acceptable. Hell, Republicans know this: none of them thought Biden had a mandate or that they were obligated to roll over and play dead. And Biden won a much more decisive victory than Trump.

Expect to hear more wailing that anyone who opposes Trump is doing something unconstitutional and unfair and remember it isn’t true.

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November 18, 2024 · 5:15 am

Quotes that relate to our current plight

“The danger in the minds and hearts of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shivering and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man’s world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar, and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.” — James Baldwin, still depressingly timely (and relevant to the stubborn resistance to women’s equality as well).

““The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.” If you truly believe that, if you perceive a world that is constructed according to certain assumptions and values, then you see that it can be changed, not least by changing those assumptions and values. …” — Rebecca Solnit

“During harrowing times some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It’s not a one-way progress. Almost everyone has their moments. But there’s a particular kind of militant doomerism afoot at the moment. Any discussions of next steps in the battle against Trumpism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or strategies, are met with a chorus of, “don’t you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin!!?!” Or “don’t you know rules don’t matter to Donald Trump!?!?!” — Josh Marshall.

““There are rumors that have come up to the Hill of a secretive project within the Department of Defense involving the manipulation of human genetics with what is described as non-human genetic material for the enhancement of human capabilities, hybrids. Are any of you familiar with that? Yes, or no? Are there any accounts of UAPs emerging from or submerging into our waters which could indicate a base or presence between the ocean’s surface?” — Lauren Boebert showing having to fight for re-election hasn’t made her any more interested in serious government work.

“We CAN fight fascists without fisticuffs or violence. Voting, and encouraging other non-chuds to vote, is an important first step,” — a look at how one Maine community drove neo-Nazis out.

“There’s nothing funny about this, given what’s about to happen, but…this is right up there with thinking that Texas Republicans are going to pivot to social democracy. This is like doing construction work for Trump on spec and expecting to get paid.” — Scott Lemieux on the Arab-American Trump supporters who thought he’d rein Israel in.

“The people of God hate (at least) three things, for they are three things that the Lord hates: the trampling of the poor, the killing of the weak, and lies about one another and about the Lord. We can build communities that resist those particular things by the power of the Holy Spirit. Such work has always been necessary. Maybe this will remind people of that fact. ” — I know, not all y’all are Christian, but those are good things to hate.

“There is no such thing as an adult “vaccine skeptic” in the year 2024. For all its factual value as a label, you might just as accurately call R.F.K. Jr. an esquilax. Any reasonable questions that a skeptical, critical-minded person might have about how and whether vaccines work can be answered by more hard, clear evidence than a person could exhaust in a year of nonstop research. To practice skepticism in this case, to approach the science of vaccination with a skeptic’s demands, is to learn that vaccines work, and that vaccination as a practice has done incalculable good for humanity. The idea of a “vaccine skeptic” in 2024 is as nonsensical as the idea of a germ theory skeptic. A molecular biology skeptic. A heliocentricity skeptic. A spherical triangle.”— LGM on the news media pretending RFK has a point.

“Women candidates in general do not appear to suffer any electoral penalty for being women. You can argue that the presidency is different, but the evidence for that assertion consists of two trials that in and of themselves don’t really provide any evidence for that belief. It’s like asserting that flipping a coin twice and having it land on heads both times means that the coin will never come up tails ever again no matter what.”

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November 17, 2024 · 5:24 am

Mad science, twisted faith and more: books read

I picked up MONSTERS AND MAD SCIENTISTS: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie by Andrew Tudor to see if it had any insight into Dr. Jekyll (I think it does, though I’m not sure what yet). Tudor takes the analytical approach of counting mad scientist and mad science films from the 1930s through the 1980s and looking at how science and scientists are treated. He concludes that while the 1930s were keen on Misguided Visionaries, later mad scientists are likely to be Pure Evil and science itself exists as a threat without a mad scientist figure (e.g., radiation-spawned monstrosities of the 1950s). While it wasn’t a point the book brought up it did make me realize one difference between Jekyll and Frankenstein is that it’s much harder for Jekyll to destroy the monster he’s created.

BROKEN WORDS: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics by Jonathan Dudley, argues that although evangelical conservatives insist their claims about abortion, evolution, homosexuality, etc. are based on the word of God, they ignore that it’s their interpretations of the Bible and that it’s open to be interpreted in other ways (as Mark Noll has written, both abolitionists and slaveowners cited the Bible prior to the Civil War). Raised evangelical, Dudley is horrified at the turn to the right his wing of the faith has taken, though he points out that liberal evangelicals are prone to the same weakness.

TWO-GUN WITCH by Bishop O’Connell has an elven bounty hunter in the post-Civil War West (I had a depressing feeling this was going to go with “elves are the Native Americans in this world” but no, they coexist and are both discriminated against) hunt down an unspeakably evil magus who turns out to be artificially tainted with dark magic. But who could do that? What would they stand to gain? This was a good read, though more leisurely-paced and character-centric than I expect from a weird western.

I was less entertained by Richard Kadrey’s THE EVERYTHING BOX which feels like an unsuccessful attempt to knock off Good Omens. In the aftermath of Noah’s flood, an angel assigned to wipe out the survivors loses the accursed box of plagues he was given for that purpose; in the modern world, a thief, his poltergeist sidekick and an FBI agent all get involved in the hunt for the McGuffin. Everything from the banter to the inept angel felt too familiar to keep going with this one.

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November 16, 2024 · 5:15 am

Vampires, cardinals and clubs: movies viewed

TYG is a big fan of the 1922 silent NOSFERATU so I bought her a BluRay for our anniversary this summer. Last weekend I watched it for myself.

FW Murnau’s film was an unauthorized, copyright-breaking adaptation of Dracula; Bram Stoker’s widow sued and won but some copies of the film survived the subsequent destrucgtion. As in Stoker, a real-estate agent journeys into Transylvania to arrange a house in his small German town for Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Rather than Lugosi’s seductive foreigner, Orlok is a desiccated figure with a tendency to materialize out of nowhere, but he’s just as deadly a neighbor. The end results lack the screen presence of Lugosi’s vampire but this take is far more interesting visually I also like the detail that rather than sleep on dirt from their own graves, vampires fill their coffins with dirt from the graves of Black Death victims.

THE LANGUAGE OF SHADOWS (2007) was a special feature on the Bluray, a documentary about Murnau and Nosferatu including the lawsuit, the shooting locations and the occult elements the production designer worked into the sets and props.

CONCLAVE (2024) stars Ralph Fiennes as the Dean of the College of Cardinals steering the next election after the Holy Father kicks the bucket — but should the new pope be reformer Stanley Tucci, twitchy moderate John Lithgow, militant zealot Sergio Castellitto or possibly Fiennes himself, reluctant though he is? A good drama but not a great drama, particularly given the acting firepower, and visually it’s flat (I concede they’re working in confined spaces but Kurosawa could have made it sing). Isabella Rossellini plays a nun. The American political dramas The Best Man or Advise and Consent might make interesting double bills. “If there was only certainty and no doubt there would be no mystery — and therefore no faith.”

Back in the 1990s, Robert Putnam stirred up a storm with Bowling Alone, a book pointing out how Americans — historically huge on joining clubs, fraternal orders, societies and bowling leagues — were now far more likely to be bowling alone and not belonging to anything. The documentary JOIN OR DIE (2023) restates the thesis, combined with Putnam’s biography and restates the arguments that joining clubs and other groups is not only good for society (though as Putnam’s book admits, groups like the Mafia and the KKK show evil groups can have social cohesion too) but for personal health and peace of mind. Pretty good. “I now discovered the National Picnic Archive.”

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November 15, 2024 · 2:25 pm

Back to normal, more or less

I’m still horrified about the shell-shock of last week’s election results. However stuff has to get written and I’m the one who writes it, so back to work this week. But definitely not peak performance. It happens.

Most of the time I wound up watching Jerry Lewis’ 1963 The Nutty Professor, the commentary track, and then the Eddie Murphy remake and its sequel. I keep forgetting it takes longer than the running time: I have to pause it while I write notes, pause it some more while I write down the credits, stop if I get up for tea or whatever … so that took quite a while.

I got 50 pages into my final final absolutely final edit of Southern Discomfort. This is now the priority for the rest of the month; I can’t release it yet because I still have to get my cover art but I want the work finished. And it will be.

I spent way more time than planned on Ceaseless Way. As noted this morning, we’ve settled on Black Friday for the release date. Trouble is, all sorts of last minute technical problems cropped up when I ran it through the Draft 2 Digital and Amazon KDP systems for publishing it. Nothing fatal (I don’t think so) but struggling to work it through took time. Plus there’s a bunch of questions I have for our next Zoom meeting Sunday. Then I’ll have to spend more time Monday putting everything into finished form. I’m looking forward to seeing it out but as I’ve said before, it’s been way more work than I wanted it to be.

I didn’t get anything in for The Local Reporter — all my story queries to various people fell on deaf ears — but at the Atomic Junk Shop website I wrote about the changes and reboots of 1969 such as the price hike from 12 to 15 cents.