Goes live on Saturday!

A Sunny Day on Ganymede goes live on Saturday!  Pre-order's live now!  It'll be available as a paperback, Kindle, and on Kindle Unlimited!  

(Yes, I'm excited!)

Kids! Kids in colonies!

 I managed a thing.  No, it's not finishing the new Modern Gods book.  Nor is it the novel about the kid embarking on life befriending Von Newman entity that took over a Chevy Silverado.  

Instead, I've managed to get ambushed by enough short stories to put together a themed collection.  The stories that ambushed me have protagonists varying in age between eight and seventeen, all boys, and all of the stories should be readable--and enjoyable--by pretty much any age or sex. 

How do I know that last?  My daughter's enjoyed the ones she's read.  And she's planning on beta reading the rest.   

The collection's titled A Sunny Day on Ganymede, and it contains five stories.   It's up for pre-order, now, and will be released in late August, to give me time to address any issues Pixie spots in reading.  

Cheers, y'all!

The End of Last School Year, or Why I Don't Have Anything Ready to Publish, Yet

 One of the worst things about parenting, I’ve been told, is that you’re responsible for everything they do, but have no control over any of it.

My observations as a parent have indicated that this is true. It’s absolutely true. You are held responsible for all the trouble your kids get into, and you can’t keep them from doing stupid shit when you’re not around to smack the stupid out of them; however, think about it from the kid’s perspective. You’re told, from day one, that all of your actions and choices reflect on your parents, but you’re shoved into a small room with twenty-five others the same calendar age as you, but with mental and emotional ages anywhere from two years older than calendar age, to four years younger. You have, perhaps, one or two peers—children your age, your maturity level, and your ability level—with whom you get along.

And there’s one adult who plays favorites at the head of the room. Their favorites are cosseted, rewarded, never disciplined if they misbehave.

The funny thing is that the pets are almost always girls.

And the pets, by and large, despise everyone that isn’t one of the favored few. And they target those. They bully, they tattle, they cry-bully—oh, he/she hurt my feelings by saying/doing something I don’t like! Make them stop!

And the pets’ targets? Frequently boys, but they’ll also target girls who befriend their designated target. The point is to try to get the girls to abandon the friendship, to isolate their target, and either drive them out entirely, or keep them in trouble.

Sometimes, they manage to get one of the girls that are friends with the target to turn on them, to tattle something said in confidence expressing frustration that gets twisted into a threat.

(Somehow, though, the pets’ threats are never more than a joke...and never get the same disciplinary action.)

Is it any wonder that schools are deemed torture chambers by some of the kids?

I’m not posing hypotheticals. One of my kids is a designated target. Another has faced bullying to break a friendship with a designated target.

My kids are in private school.

I grew up in public school, where the bullying was a lot more overt, and physical. I have to admit I missed the signs of the bullying my kids were facing because it’s not the same. It’s not open. It’s girl-bullying. All of it. Seraglio politics-type bullying, where the target’s isolated, emotionally targeted, and when they react, the bullies—yes, I said it—work to fully ruin the target: the victims’ reputation is targeted, and the bullies try to get things put on a permanent record.

And nobody halts it because it’s not bullying bullying. I mean, nobody’s hurt, right? And we act on threats, right?

Wrong. My son’s been sexually harassed in ways that’d get a boy bounced—did get a boy bounced, even when it was a prank on a girl whose pants were too low rise and exposing her butt crack, and the boy had no interest in the girl at all.* They push, and they demand attention (well, he’s a child of proud gen-X parents; they don’t normally like the attention they get from him). He’s tried being kind, tried being blunt, tried telling them he’s Ace...nothing works to make them back off, except for cruelty and insults...which gets him in trouble. But not the girls who started it.

Has he reported the harassment? He says he has; the official response is “oh, they like you! You should be flattered!”

He’s not flattered. He’s annoyed, he’s frustrated, he’s grossed out, and this has pushed him so far into being asexual that I’m not sure he’s going to come back out again. And it’s because the school allows behavior from the girls that they absolutely would not allow from the boys.

My son’s had bomb threats made against his house.

Has he reported the behavior? He says he has.** And nobody did anything. Oh, the bomb threats were jokes. Girls wouldn’t actually go through with that. 

(I beg people to do some fucking research on the political terrorism of the ‘70s, and who the terrorists setting bombs were.)

But the instant my son makes jokes about Call of Duty letting him vent, and if he were to go on a spree, the girls targeting him would be at the top of the list? Oh, that’s a threat.***

So, he was suspended. For finals week. And the following school year.

(But they let him make up finals week after all the other students are gone from the building.)

And here’s the kicker. If you’ll notice, I haven’t named/shamed the school. There are some reasons for that. First, it’s against the rules to badmouth the school on social media. And my daughter’s got friends there, and is doing incredibly well (4.0 GPA), in ways my son just...isn’t. I don’t want this blowing back on her.

Second, I also don’t want this blowing back on him. I’ve been...not quite threatened. See, they could have called the police, y’see. And if they were a public school, they’d have had to. I’m not naming and shaming, even though they’ve suspended him now for the next school year. Not expelled, just suspended for the ‘26-‘27 school year.

As if that’s not the same as expulsion. He’s going to be eighteen in October. He’s going into Junior year...and that’s what he’d be suspended for all of. He’d only go back for his senior year, and, at this point, I’m inclined to finish him out with homeschool with a GED and the tech certs.

And even with all the bullying he faced, the anxiety and the difficulties caused by being a smart, ADHD boy in a girl-centric environment, all of that is better than what he’d have faced in standard classes at the local public school. Even if his grades would’ve jumped probably by three letters.

Honestly, another reason I'm not naming and shaming is because, when I challenged the superintendent on different standards of punishment for boys and girls, he claimed he'd never heard about Imp's issues, and was not happy, and would be investigating.  I couldn't tell you whether the principal knew or not, considering he'd been on his way out the door.  This year, the superintendent and the managing director of the school's tech programs will be splitting the duties while they look for another, so I doubt this will get swept under the rug.

But with all of the above happening in mid-May, I've been bouncing around like an unprogrammed Roomba, trying to figure out how to keep Imp's spot in the trade school and figuring out what I'm going to end up teaching him next year.  And how.  I mean, I can do economics (thank you, Dr. Sowell, for your magnificent book), science, and language/literature; Other Half can do History, and we can split government.  However.  I seriously don't have any idea how I'm going to manage any higher maths when I only barely managed Algebra.  And I'm not certain what math program he needs--Algebra 2, or something else--to mesh with the program he'll be going into (Advanced Manufacturing).

So, there you have it: the biggest reason why I don't have anything quite ready for publication, even though it's freakin' July, and the last thing I had out was in March. 

*Kid dropped a pencil down her exposed crack. Expelled for “sexual harassment.” Even though the kid had no interest in that girl, and a noted impulse problem with dropping pencils down cracks...just mostly through vents, or air returns, rather than clothing-exposed body parts.

**Reporting is done via email to an account that the office help has access to. One of the ringleaders is office help. Because the principal is frequently not in his office, and sometimes can’t be found at all for reporting in person.

***Further info: the joke was made during a history presentation. The teacher didn’t report it as a threat. A girl he thought he was friends with reported it over a week later, when she got mad at him. He’d gotten up to throw something away, and she’d taken his seat. School student-culture’s unspoken rules expect them to find an empty seat somewhere else, and be quiet; he absolutely wasn’t willing to get in trouble by sitting somewhere other than his assigned seat, as he would have done.

Shadow

 End of April(ish) 2012-July 7 2026

We adopted Shadow and Cricket on Independence Day, back in '12.  Imp wasn't quite 4, and Pixie was just about 19 months.  And we went to PetSmart to let them look at the critters, since the zoo was over an hour away.  There was a kennel cage with two kittens, about 10 weeks* or so, wrestling.  They stopped abruptly when the kids squealed, and rushed to the bars to scream and reach for the kids.  

We'd lost Binx a few weeks earlier, and I was slowly coming apart without a cat.  So, since those two fuzzballs wanted my kids so desperately...we adopted them.  Both.  So the kids wouldn't fight over a single kitten, and so one kitten wouldn't be lonely.  

Shadow was...Shadow was terribly smart.  Terrifyingly smart.  And brave.  Cricket, when we got her home, hid out for a little while; Shadow explored.   Shadow napped on the kids while they watched Tom & Jerry.  Shadow went to bed at night with Imp (she didn't stay there).  But she slept on Imp every night until about January, when she became too frail for him to want her to jump down from his half-loft.  He hasn't slept nearly as well since then, either. 

Shadow would bap Cricket on the head and then run from her--and then abruptly change direction, while Cricket kept going for a while...I swear she was laughing at her much dimmer sister.  

When the cats were five and the kids were six and eight, we moved into a much bigger house.  

Cricket hid for three days.  Shadow explored, found that she could thunder from one end of the house to the other, and use the hall runner to slide a few feet. She'd do that over and over for years, because it was fun.  She discovered...the full length mirror on the back of the master bathroom door.  Which was fascinating.  And she realized, pretty quickly, that that was her in the mirror.  

She loved this house.  There were mice in the garage that she could catch and eat.  And wow, did she do a LOT of that.  And sometimes, she'd come in from hunting with cobwebs in her whiskers that she had trouble cleaning out, and she'd go to the bathrooms, to one of the mirrors, and use that to clean the cobwebs out of her whiskers.  

A few years ago, she learned to talk--a few words, garbled.  I was not expecting that.  She'd say Imp's name, out, mouse, yeah, and no.  And Mama.  I found out she knew how to say help, one time when she had a hairball: "Oh, no. Oh, no.  Oh, no, no, no."  Hurk.  "Mama, halp!" hurk-splat "ew."   

She'd started losing weight a couple of years ago.  Slow.  And then, this year, right at the beginning she took a hard downturn.  It's been a hard seven months, watching her fade, and trying to fight it.   Watching her struggle and fight it.  She didn't want to go, until suddenly she did.  

We loved her very much.  I suspect she loved all of us (including that irritating dog) just as much.  

I will miss her for the rest of my life.  

It's been a long year...

And we haven't made it to August, yet. 

Imp failed first semester biology.  In spite of trying really hard to not.  Was the teacher and the way the class was structured, not just his information retention and unwillingness to expend effort on a failing proposition.  My stress levels jacked way the hell up.

Then. Back in January, Shadow stopped eating.  Entirely.  I managed to pull her through the crisis, but it took a lot of time, effort, and stress.  Which led to February.  

In February, I got sick. Again.  Flu-adjacent.  I never take viruses to the doctor, since there's jack-all they can do; however, this time, one dose of Anacin really hurt.  And then, the toddy in the evening to knock the virus back a bit felt like pouring rubbing alcohol on a scraped knee.  

In my stomach.  I'd expected it with the sore throat, but not...not my stomach.  That sent me to the doctor.   She said it was eminently possible that I did, indeed have ulcers, but that it was likely stress-induced, in my case (and she wasn't wrong).  She gave me a prescription for six weeks of PPI, and switched my brands of natural thyroid to the one that worked better.  

And the cat had another downturn, just after I finished up my six weeks of PPI at the end of March.  MUCH more stress.  I pulled her through it, and managed to get her to gain a little weight. Not much, but a little. So that was a relief.

Oh, and Imp passed third quarter biology...barely.  As in, one half of a percentage point appeared to bring him up to 60% on his third quarter grades.  Out of nowhere. That was something of a relief, too, but it was very short lived.  

Toward the end of the school year, the cat had yet another downturn, but not as bad.  

The Imp, on the other hand...well.  I'm working on a piece explaining the shit-show that ended the school year, there. 

And so, we're at the beginning of July, and Shadow has decided it's time to go.  I can't get her to eat. I can't get her to drink, at this point.  She's shutting down, and cold, even as she lifts her head to squeak when I go check on her. 

I haven't gotten anything done except rushing around trying (and failing) to put out fires.  I don't have anything finished and ready to publish.  I mean, I've got one project about half done, and a collection of shorts about 2/3 done.  NOT planned shorts, not a planned collection, just...well. I get mugged by stuff that demands to be written immediately, or else it shuts down the main projects until I do. Faster to write the damned stories. 

 Oh, and my laptop's giving signs that it wants to die.  I am going to need a new one.  I'm trying to keep it going at least until we can take advantage of the back-to-school sales tax holiday.  And we're also going to need a new printer.  And a laptop for Imp, since I'm responsible for that.  And textbooks.   

August isn't going to be any better.  I'll still be grieving Shadow (and probably spoiling Cricket a bit), and I'll be pushing to get both kids ready for the school year.  I'm really not sure how anything's going to shake out for the next year, at least, and possibly the next two years.  

Iz out!

 

 

Mad Science: Bits and Pieces, Raconteur Press's 73rd short story anthology, dropped live a day early.  

Yes, folks, that means it's out today! Go get yours!  

I haz a happy!

A few weeks back, I sent a story to Raconteur Press, for one of their upcoming anthologies.  The specific one will go live a week from Friday.

I...wasn't expecting to, but I got in.  I signed the contract and sent it back, and dealt with the editor's suggestions as promptly as I could, but I kept expecting to get bumped.  

I didn't get bumped.

And today, I learned...

The census counts. Counts CITIZENS.

 Back when the Constitution was being drafted (in the late eighteenth century), the census was something fought over between the free states and the slave states.  You see, the slave states (Democrat run, Southern) wanted their slaves all counted in the census.  For reasons.  

The Northern states didn't want them counted at all. 

Huh?  What?  WTF, over?  Wasn't the North anti-slavery?  

Well...yes.  And that was the fucking point.

If the North had allowed the South to count each of their non-citizen, non-voting slaves in the census, then the South would have completely overwhelmed the North in the House of Representatives, which held the strings to the purse.  They'd never have been able to do anything to their benefit, never be able to do anything to help the slaves.  The nation we live in now would not exist.  

It would not have survived the first challenge, even.  

However, the South would not agree to the North's demand that no slave gets counted; by that measure, the North would bury them in the House of Representatives.  And the South would get...well.  Not anything it wanted.  

Eventually, a compromise was reached: slaves would count in the census, but only as just barely over half a person: one slave counted as 3/5 of a person.  

When I learned about this in school, I was taught it was because the people writing the Constitution thought that they weren't human, and shouldn't count.  I was taught that the 3/5 Compromise was evil and racist.  

It wasn't.  It was a heroic effort expended by both sides to fight for representation for their population, regarding taxation and apportionment.  When the 3/5 Compromise was reached, nobody was happy about it.  Both sides hated it equally for different reasons: the North because the people being counted had no rights under the law; the South because they lacked the industry and population of the North, and were counting on being able to count the slaves to be allowed to keep them as slaves without right to recourse or redress.   

Fast forward almost 200 years.  We're having the same, damn argument again.  Made by the spiritual descendants of those slave-owning Democrats.  With the same, damn reasoning. The Census is supposed to count citizens.  To apportion seats in the House of Representatives, and for tax and funding purposes. 

The Democrat party wants all illegals counted under the census.  People who are not citizens, not allowed to vote, not allowed to fucking be here.  They aren't here legally, do not belong here, and...collect welfare in Democrat run states.

Without those individuals counted, the Democrats will lose a lot of seats.  

This time, we cannot compromise.  Just because they live here doesn't mean they're citizens.  Only citizens--born and naturalized alike--should be counted in the census.  

The last time we compromised, we ended up in a bloody war about it just over half a century later.  And the scars from that still haven't healed. 

This is stupid. Let me show why.

  

Okay.  I see the math.  I'm going to show why her math doesn't work.  

She's looking at gross only.  The top line.  From that amount, she'll need to subtract overhead--that's facilities costs.  How much does her building cost to rent?  Probably a lot, because she only needs the one, big room.  Say a storefront downtown.  Renting means she doesn't have to pay for repairs and other maintenance costs...directly.  How much does her power bill run?  Her water/sewer bill?  The trash bill?  The gas bill for heating?  Yeah, that's a ton more.  Best figure the facilities cost will run around $200K.  Maybe $250K.  Minimum.  

That leaves...somewhere between $127K and $77,600.  

Cool.  Now figure your janitor's wages.  You're not getting one for less than $20K per year...and that's part time.  

So.  That pulls it down to $107-$57,600.   

But wait!  There's MORE!!!  

This silly bitch be a public school teacher.  Public schools provide breakfast and lunch on their dime for around half of the students.  That involves food costs, and salaries for cooks!  

There goes another $50K!  Minimum!  So...her share's shrinking.  Hugely.  

Okay.  Let's assume she's not going to transport the little darlings herself, since that would leave her in the red.  Let's look at...insurance.  Insurance is going to eat probably another $30-50K/year.  

Her take-home is going to be maybe $14K, if she's lucky, and has the brains to cut a LOT of deals. (Which, on balance, given her starting premise with no thought, I doubt she's capable of.) 

Suddenly, that starting teachers' salary of $27-$37K is looking a whole lot better, isn't it?

Coming up as of next week:

 The Last History-Keeper: a Liquid Diet Chronicles Tale

 

Imagine what it would be like to remember all of history.

Justinian doesn’t have to imagine. He’s the last of a nearly-lost line of vampires, the last keeper of history, hunted by tyrant and monster alike, alive only because of the grace of God, and the luck of having an early pope hide him from those hunting him. He’s been in the catacombs of Vatican City ever since, hidden and safe.

But now...now he’s needed. Vampire, priest, visionary, historian, he’s been sent forth into the world, to walk it once again.

His ordained path leads him to...Manhattan, Kansas. To a brand new nest, filled with orphans and outcasts. And the journey takes him into the path of those who need his help: a six year old girl with an unmanageable memory, and a brand new line with gifts that terrify.

Reality bites.

Actions and choices have consequences.  

Normally, people learn that starting in toddlerhood: toddler throws a tantrum, consequences are applied to bad behavior.  Toddler does something right, rewards are applied for behavior the parent wants to see repeated.  

And on, and on.  Until eventually, there's a functional adult standing there, moving out and into their own lives.  

Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, that has short-circuited.  There are more toddlers reaching the age of majority than there should be.  People who throw tantrums in public.  People who attack others in public.  

People who use their cars as battering rams.  

And crowds of people who are shocked, just shocked, when the consequences are applied.  

That doesn't count the media who fucking lies about the situation, either.*  

Yes, I'm talking about the fuckwits protesting the removal of criminal aliens in Minnesota in general, and Renee Good, who used her car to assault members of law enforcement** in the course of doing their jobs, in specific.  She fucked around--hit an ICE officer, and tried to run him over--and found out, good and hard.  She deserved the bullets to the face that she got.  Fully and completely deserved those bullets, and would have even if said ICE agent hadn't been run over and dragged six months earlier.  

Yes, I said it.  The stupid bitch deserved to be shot, and while the agent may have reacted quickly out of previous trauma, he reacted correctly.  And I would argue that, since he wasn't badly injured by her stupidity, he reacted quickly enough.  He didn't overreact.  And he didn't shoot her too fast.  

Another agent may have hesitated; that hesitation might have killed him or her.     

Renee Good was 37 years old.  A mother.  A toddler in an adult body.  Because an adult wouldn't have been protesting--an adult would have been working to provide for her child, since she was widowed.  An adult would have put their child's needs before her own need to be stunningbrave, and center of attention.  An adult wouldn't have fucking tried to run over another individual, unless that individual was presenting a threat to her safety (and probably not even then).  An adult would have been aware that there are consequences to assault, and wouldn't have engaged in assault.  

She is entirely deserving of the bullets to the face she took.  Because yes, she was a grown-ass woman with a toddler mentality, but she was still a grown-ass woman who made a dangerous, dumbass choice, one that endangered the life of someone doing their job.  In short, her toddler mentality tried to kill him, and he succeeded in killing her right back.  

Yes, her actions were her choice, because she was a grown woman; however, I'd seriously lay the fault for her choice as much at the feet of her parents and the education system as I would at lay the fault on her for making that choice in that moment.   

I've seen updates that her orphaned son will be raised by his grandparents; I hope to God that it's the kid's paternal grandparents that will raise him, because his maternal grandparents didn't raise their daughter. 

 

*The media is spinning stories so hard that any tenuous connection with reality gets snapped in the spin, trying to paint law enforcement and our duly elected government giving orders as the bad guys.  I refuse to link and give them views, but I've seen headlines that ICE shot a woman who was sitting in her car.  Yes, she was...but she was actively trying to run over officers, not parked, as the story and headline imply.

**Yes, ICE is law enforcement.  Federal, not state or local.  But still law enforcement.  Because it's against the fucking law to cross our fucking borders without our fucking permission, or to overstay the fucking temporary permissions of a student visa or traveler's visa.   

Holy SHIT!

Happy New Year!  Dang!  We're three days in, and that magnificent bastard has managed to do more of what I voted for, and...wow!

And it's not just Venezuela this is going to end up hitting:  there's also Russia (translated tweet follows).

"This is not f***ing funny, you underdeveloped idiots. Soon it won’t even be profitable for us to extract oil. In a couple of months we’ll starve to death. This is checkmate for the entire economy of the underdeveloped traitor Putin. May he die, a real bastard. A talentless, stinking piece of f***ot trash. This is a nightmare for us. They will drop the price of oil below the floor and take over the entire market. Now, on top of everything else, they’ll also have oil. This is a total f***ing disaster. And we’ll be left without internet, drowning in taxes, hugging our f***ing oil. The political leadership of our country needs to be killed. They are inherently insane. And they are traitors. They should be hanged. The Americans have just extended their existence for several more centuries, while ours will end in a month." 

I'd say I was sorry for the common people in Russia, but I'm not.  They've permitted the bastards running their nation into the ground to run their nation into the ground.   I'm glad this is going to hurt that country as a whole--maybe they'll fucking learn something this time about civilized behavior.  

(note, I'm not holding my breath)

Iranian Mullahs have just lost a bunch of their weapons development and their escape plans.   My shadenboner may have reached low earth orbit by this point--which should be impressive, considering I lack the parts.  

Not sure yet how this is going to affect China, but they had diplomats there in talks with Maduro the day before we snagged him out of his bunker before he could close and bolt the door.   

Of course, there are the usual depressives, Marxists, and anti-American psy-ops wailing and bemoaning unconstitutional acts, but I don't recall hearing anything about any of the unconstitutional foreign bombings, drone attacks, and extra-judicial assassinations pulled off by Clinton or Obama.  They can sit down and STFU.  

Overall, this is exactly what I voted for, and I'm enjoying every second.  

  

It's ALIVE!!!

So.  Today's New Year's Eve.  Last day of 2025.  And Street Snacks dropped live at midnight.  

I know a lot of people will be drinking and staying up way too late tonight, and having a quiet day tomorrow.   So...why not add reading a book to your hangover self-care routine? 

  

Don’t leave your empties lying in the streets, guys, jeez...

Meg Turner had a quiet six months (after the end of the monster incursion). That was because her borders were closed, but her six months of peace were up when her borders came down. While, yes, bringing her borders down allowed for a lot of postponed good things, it also allowed for an ill-considered challenge for her territory and a couple of murderers to waltz across her borders.

Oh, and an abandoned fledgling that had awakened to the night, buried in a dumpster. One that the Justices would have seen culled with most of the fledglings in the Kansas City nest. Thank goodness she’d sent Radu to rescue the ones that could recover from being brought over by cannibalistic monsters, and nobody official had paid attention to how many they’d rescued.

Between hiding an extra fledgling from the new Justice, Richmond recovering from a nasty case of PTSD, a vampire hiding his feeding on the homeless as animal attacks, and another feeding on her young vampires, Meg has her hands full.

And she’d really like to close her borders again, to avoid having to deal with all of this nonsense, please and thank you.

This is the fifth in the Liquid Diet Chronicles, and I've almost finished a novella expanding on a side character or two, introduced in this book.  Probably will toss that out for y'all sometime in mid-January, so grab this one and read it now.  

(Or start at the beginning, if you want, and read all of them.  They're available KU, as a Kindle purchase, or as a paperback.)   

Merry Christmas.

 

Coming up...

 

Street Snacks, the fifth in the Liquid Diet Chronicles, will be dropping live on New Year's Eve.  

Don’t leave your empties lying in the streets, guys, jeez...

Meg Turner had a quiet six months (after the end of the monster incursion). That was because her borders were closed, but her six months of peace were up when her borders came down. While, yes, bringing her borders down allowed for a lot of postponed good things, it also allowed for an ill-considered challenge for her territory and a couple of murderers to waltz across her borders.

Oh, and an abandoned fledgling that had awakened to the night, buried in a dumpster. One that the Justices would have seen culled with most of the fledglings in the Kansas City nest. Thank goodness she’d sent Radu to rescue the ones that could recover from being brought over by cannibalistic monsters, and nobody official had paid attention to how many they’d rescued.

Between hiding an extra fledgling from the new Justice, Richmond recovering from a nasty case of PTSD, a vampire hiding his feeding on the homeless as animal attacks, and another feeding on her young vampires, Meg has her hands full.

And she’d really like to close her borders again, to avoid having to deal with all of this nonsense, please and thank you.

New book!

 

 Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells 

Amaryllis and Chris have been in love since...forever. Even if Amaryllis didn’t realize it until Chris fell off a ladder. A year later, they’re working and planning toward a wedding. Eventually. When they get enough money built up, and can take the time to do it.

Unfortunately, Amaryllis forgot Thanksgiving. Her mother decided that since she forgot it, she could make it. And that would have been fine, if the turkey hadn’t suddenly been the worst thing ever.

Now, she’s got three weeks to plan her own wedding, and only four hundred dollars to pay for it. But she’ll manage. It’ll work.

It just has to.

This is a sequel to Fixing Up Love, from last year.  You don't have to read that one, but there'll be bits in this one that'll make more sense if you have.  

 

 

Musings on Charity, Dependence, Independence, and Entitlement

I grew up a victim of federal charity.  

Yes, I said that exactly how I meant it.  

Mom had food stamps.  It was the '80s/90s.  She got $285 per month of food stamps.  Actual stamps--the government, food-only cash counterfeit.  Came stapled in bundles of twenties, tens, fives, and ones.  She had to tear them carefully out of the booklets and give over as exact of change as she could.  She normally paid just under and made up the extra with coinage.  Because we didn't get change back.  Not at first.  The rules didn't permit for it.  Just like the rules didn't permit for the food stamp money to buy anything but food.  

And that was a good thing.  When the rules changed for people to be able to get change back?  People started going in, buying the bitty packs of gum, one at a time, a dollar at a time, and getting change back.  Real money that would buy cigarettes, beer, or whatever.   

And believe me, fraud was rampant.  People paid drug dealers in food stamps.  Which then meant that the dealers didn't have to use cash to buy their own food.  Yes, I saw it happen.  More than once.  Usually on the back steps of the income-based government duplexes.   

Wanna know what else you couldn't spend food stamps on where I grew up?  Convenience foods.  Junk foods.  Luxury foods (steaks--except bottom round, because that wasn't really edible without a lot of work--roasts--beef and pork--boneless chicken). Not because it was against the rules, but because the cashiers wouldn't ring them up for food stamps customers.  There was one rancid old bitch that wouldn't ring up packaged ground beef, either. 

And you'd better believe that everyone knew who got food stamps.   

You know something?  People (who weren't in our situation) worked to get off food stamps with that kind of difficulty and limitations.  

Most of the meat I had through childhood came from church-supplied food banks.  So did cheese.   So did boxed mac and cheese.  

Also, we got boxes with the gawd-awful USDA white-label crap that the government gave away: potato flakes that congealed, big boxes of American "cheese" that was so awful I'd never had anything nearly so bad (until I met Velveeta), bags of dry beans, and rice, and limp canned veggies.  

We didn't starve, but we wouldn't have eaten well.  Not if Mom hadn't known how to cook from scratch.  Most of the food stamps we got got spent on milk, bread, flour, potatoes, the meat the people at the registers would ring up, sugar, eggs, baking powder, baking soda, yeast, lentils, brown rice (which we never got in the boxes of charity food), and other dry staples.  

But Mom did know how to cook.  She could take bottom round and turn it into country-fried steak, or really anything she could think of.   I ate a lot better than most of my classmates who were also on food stamps.  

Wanna know what I didn't learn?  

I didn't learn where it came from.  I didn't learn why it wasn't fair for Mom to get that, didn't learn why Mom was wrong when she groused that food stamps didn't cover soap, shampoo, toilet paper.  

I did learn that I wanted to get the hell off of food stamps.  And I did.  All the way off.  We've never gotten them.  Or WIC.  Not even when my other half wasn't employed, and we had a toddler and an infant.  

Now, government charity traps people.  In the name of "removing stigma" so that "more people that need help can get help," the people that run the programs have made victims.  They've created a perpetual underclass.  Because the way the programs work?  Yeah.  It encouraged dependence on the programs, and penalizes any attempts to get off the programs in question.  The only people willing to put up with that are grifters who never had any intention of being honest, and often didn't really need the help to begin with.

And the people who desperately need help?  They often aren't getting it.  Because of how government charity is set up, it rewards the people who moan, wail, and perform "need" that they don't actually have.  There absolutely are people who do need help.  They, by and large, don't get it.  Most of them suck it up, tighten their belts...and slowly sink.  Debt and despair.  

These are the people who, a hundred years ago, their entire parish/congregation would have known who they were.  They'd have had help.  Often quiet help, and often without asking.  Neighbors holding each other up until they can get their feet back under them.   

But that's in small towns; in larger areas, the help took longer to manifest, and had more strings attached.  It was, however, still there.  And it didn't encourage continued dependence, not like current government funded charity does.   

The church I've been going to for a while now...they're doing a lot of charity work.  Almost none of it is local.  The money they raise goes overseas, to buy playground equipment for orphanages in Africa.  Not to buy groceries for local food banks.  Not to pay into local charities that pay utilities bills for people who get injured working and can't work for a while.  

That's...I mean, it's admirable to buy things for underserved children in underserved nations, but our kids here need stuff first.  

Right now.  

And we can't afford to do both.  

Not as a church...and not as a nation. 

Part 3!!!

 It's out, it's out, it's out!!!

 

Thus finishes the enormous, complex, detailed first novel set in the world of Elly.  I just got my e-copy--it's triple points day, and next paycheck is already spoken for, so why wait?   

What?  You hadn't even bought the first volume?  Why not?  

Oh.  You were afraid of being Martined.  Rothfussed.  

But...didn't I tell you?  With the first and second links? That the book was finished and scheduled for release?  I could have sworn I did...

Well.  You can go get them now.  If, y'know, you'd waited.   

I have the first volume in hardback* as well as e-book, and will be doing the same for the second when I can.  And the third.  Because the covers are pretty, and because sometimes you want to curl up with a real book, not just a reader.**   

 

*Books work better than stickers as writer rewards.  And the first one came out at just the right time to reward myself for a first-draft finished novella.

**YMMV, but I read differently if it's e-copy than I do if it's a hard copy.  When it's an e-book, it's easier to shake me loose to do things that need done.  When it's a hard copy...well.  I might notice the house burning down, but only if I caught fire, or the book did.   

Part 2 of No Man's Land is out!!!

 

Part 2 of the gigantic novel dropped yesterday!*  Go!  Grab the first volume (if you haven't) here, then get this one!  

The third part will be out in the first full week of October--yes, that does mean it's finished.  No this isn't an unfinished work (looking at Patrick Rothfuss as much as George R.R. Martin).  Yes, there will be more books in this world, but this one is finished. 

And I know this is in volumes, but it is the same book.  It's broken in three parts because if it'd been an all-in-one, it would have broken its own spine...or had print so small you'd need a magnifying glass to read it.  

That said, the author is gracious, and awesome, and has had mercy on us by splitting it into thirds.  

Go!  If you haven't bought the first, go do--then buy the second.  Pre-order the third.  

You really won't be sorry.



*I spent yesterday sitting at a dealership while they looked my car over, and clean forgot to make the announcement.  Doesn't help that I'm coming down with a respiratory bug.  Again.  

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Those were the words of Henry II, referring to Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Two knights, freshly back from the Crusades, heard the king, and took it as an order to kill Beckett.  The king denied all fault in the matter, loading all the blame onto the knights.

Don't let the media dump the blame on anyone.  They've been screaming about turbulent not-really-a-journalist journalists on the right for as long as I can remember.  

They did this.  Oh, they didn't hold the gun themselves, but they did this.

Pray for Charlie Kirk, his family, and our nation.  He wasn't a firebrand.  Not like some.  Anyone who steps up after this is going to be more of an extremist.