Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
When I enjoy a book I’m reading, I like sharing passages with others. Foremost among those others is my spouse.
Unfortunately, I’m reading Dungeon Crawling Carl. I’m greatly enjoy it and I want to talk about it with my wife. But she wants to read it, so I can’t share these passages because I don’t want to spoil it for her.
It’s one of those frustrating aspects about reading.
Mood: refreshed
My jeans came off again.
The shorts went on. Officially, they’re ‘short pants’.
This is Wednesday, April 10, 2024. 66 F now, the warm end of our day will rise to 71 F. Everything is in bloom under blue, sunny skies. It’s bold with yellows, pinks, and white blossoms and blooms, people, against a fully backdrop of green grasses and trees — along with
Things are going well for me, thanks. A woman at the coffee shop told me, “You have nice legs. If I had legs like that, I’d be in shorts, too.”
She appeared a few years younger than me and had a perfect stage voice. I’m not one who enjoys attention. Baby, I was cringing inside. But I smiled and thanked her. She responded, “Wow, you have a great smile, too.” I felt like everyone was looking by now. I thanked her again, and she waved and went on.
Back ‘home’, Mom was discharged from Forbes Hospital after treatment for appendicitis. A day and night of diarrhea was endured. Now, after being up all night in pain, she’s back at the hospital for a CT scan to see why she has pain and a fever.
My sister, G, is on the scene, waiting for news. It’s a business day at the hospital. Parking is full. The parking situation and emergency responsiveness are hampered by a sinkhole in the parking lot.
A social worker came out and spoke with sis. No beds are available for Mom and they’re proposing to scan her at another location. Now they’re suggesting, take her home and bring her back tomorrow.
WTF questions arise. Sis is dealing with it. She’s intelligent, competent, and hard-edged at times like this, unafraid to question authority, and willing to stand her ground. In other words, she’s a good person to have on site.
I was thinking about my aunt J. She’s the one I previously wrote about with colon cancer.
I always admired her and enjoy her company. She always spoke to me like I was an adult when I was a child. I think she was instrumental in teaching me to think about matters from different perspectives. That’s a quality that I’ve often depended on, and which is responsible for whatever successes and achievements I’ve had. Good to have people like her in one’s life.
I didn’t learn about all her issues. She married and was divorced when young. One child. Then, another child from an affair. That child, my cousin, was put into an orphanage until my aunt could get her life in order. She finally met and married the love of her life, as she described him, and had three more children. She and I were together until brain cancer took him about a decade ago.
Update from sis about Mom. Fever is gone. Mom is in a bed in a hallway. Awaiting further developments.
Tucker goes back to the vet this afternoon. It’s a checkup on his thyroid, high blood pressure, and his gums after having his teeth removed. Fingers crossed that my old friend is found to be healing well and his issues under control. He’s gained weight, energy, and enthusiasm over the last few days.
Two thirds of the way through reading Kings of the Wyld. High fantasy variation, and worth reading if fantasy speaks to you. An interesting spin is that adventurers are ‘bands’, much like rock bands, and treated like rock stars. We readers are in on the idea but it’s not heavy handed. Our protagonist band broke up years before and have aged into normal lives. Now, yes, they got the band back together to save one of their daughters. I highly recommend this Nicholas Eames novel, even though I’ve not finished it. Still have about one hundred fifty pages left. My wife read it first, and then urged me to read it.
Today’s music comes straight out of 1966. After reading a Heather Richardson post, I thought, tell it like it is. One of our nation’s political problems IMO is that politicians on the right lie to their supporters, and the media goes along with it for the most part. Some journalists are beginning to seriously hipcheck some of the liars but too many get a free ride. I can provide substantial examples, if you need it.
Anyway, overhearing my thinking about Ms. Richardson’s post, The Neurons began playing Aaron Neville and “Tell It Like It Is” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark burning). A beautiful torch song, it’s a good song when you’re at a fork in the road, looking back on what’s happened while gazing ahead, trying to divine a path forward.
Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue this November. I’ll be doing the same. Now, riding on wings of coffee, I’m off to continue writing and editing.
Here’s the music. Cheers
Contrails were etched across the bright blue March morning sky.
Mark had a couple problems with that. One, this was 1859. He didn’t think he should know about contrails. Didn’t think contrails should exist, for that matter. As far as he knew, they didn’t exist yesterday, when he was cutting his lawn’s grass.
But, hold up. Yesterday, he was walking to town. Like he was doing today. Except, he was thinking about the contrails, byproducts of jet aircraft slicing through the atmosphere. Jet aircraft, commercial and military, with the former being used to travel between airports, enabling people to quickly and easily traverse the country which had taken him a couple years. Jet aircraft, which should not exist in 1859.
He puckered his lips like he was about to whistle. Should they?
Seeing contrails and thinking about them were the seeds of several potential problems. “Shit,” he loudly uttered. His tongue flicked his lips. Fingers pinched together to smooth down either side of his fat graying mustache. He stamped his big boot once, then considered the mildly worn brown boot, which he knew he’d purchased at an REI. Chances were that REI didn’t now exist. Might have in the past. Or the future.
“Shit. Goddamn it.” Expanding the lungs inside of his huge chest, he bellowed, “Vonnegut.”
Mark looked around like he expected Vonnegut to appear. Nothing — not the wind-swept grasses or the one lone, high bird, or the far, snow-covered mountains — responded to him.
He expelled a sigh and sound like he was blowing the candles out on his last birthday cake. That’d been number sixty-six. Julie baked the cake for him. Such a sweet person. And so fucking smart. Fun being with her.
“Fucking Vonnegut.” Vonnegut was the cause behind the past few episodes like this. Mark figured there was a high likelihood Vonnegut was behind this one as well.
He looked east. South. West. North. No, he hadn’t been going north. South was also considered and rejected. His orientation was a matter of the coincidences of then and now, and the lay of the land. Mountains north and south. That never changed, though the stuff that occupied the land — buildings, roads, people, and other such bullshit — changed.
A qualification was appended to his thinking. Depending. Depended on how far Vonnegut took him back in time. Or put him forward. Same thing, different direction. The land changed if he went — if he was tossed, like he was a cat toy or something — into the past or future. He’d experienced each of those once. Once had been more than enough.
His broad shoulders sagged. “Why me?” With that plaintive question beginning an internal dialogue with himself about the matter, he turned and began trudging east.
East would hopefully return him to his own time. That’s how it happened a couple times. But there’d been that once.
Well, shit. He’d just need to see.
I’ve broken one of my cardinal writing rules. Two, actually.
I don’t usually allow others to read my novels in progress until I think of them as finished. But with a new novel underway, I wrote the beginning. Then I broke my second rule. I don’t talk about my writing other than mentioning progress or lack. I don’t talk with my friends and families about novels until they’re finished. But one of my beer drinking friends asked how my writing was going. Giving a mental shrug and doing a quality test on my second pint of beer, I shared the beginning of the new novel. Then, a whim later, I emailed it to several trusted friends.
All responded enthusiastically about what they read, so as I kept writing, I kept sending new installments as they were finished. I warned them it was raw and a lot of it might change. They didn’t care, encouraging me to keep sending, telling me that they were on the edge of their seats.
I know that they’re friends. Although all read in the genre in which I’m writing, they’re not objective. They might just be anxious not to hurt my feelings. And, as a pantser, I’m still in the fog, trying to understand where the muses ar leading me in this complicated story. (Note: all my novels are complicated. I enjoy reading complicated, and I like writing complicated.)
Objective or not, it was validating, even rewarding, to hear someone say how much they enjoy it. Otherwise, it’s just writing in the dark.
Michael Seidel, writer 