Book promo…

Another postcards!!! Postcards from Foolz

As always, click the cover for the Amazon link!

The blurb-

The rules of the game were simple: one image. Fifty words.

Twenty authors met the challenge and excelled, and this volume records their efforts. Between these covers are complete stories that will take a moment to read, and ages to forget.

If your appetite is whetted, you’ll also find that images have been provided for you to practice your wordsmithing skills. So that you, too, can try the next Postcards challenge.

Go on. Write!

And some preorders from friends, both dropping on the 31st of May!

First up is Kelly Grayson with Things That Go Bump in the Night

The blurb-

Every kid has felt them, the nameless things that lurk in the dark, hiding in the shadowy corners of you bedroom as you sleep, daring you to stick out an arm and a leg, let the blankets hang off the edge of the bed, leave the closet door open… anything.

Scary movies are nothing compared to a kid’s imagination in the dead of the night when they hear a strange noise. Mostly it’s just like your parents say; it’s the wind, or a shadow cast by a toy, or the drapes blowing in the breeze.

And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s the things that go bump in the night.

Next up is J.F. Holmes with Irregular Scout Team One: Volume 2 

The blurb-

A year has passed since the plague destroyed most of civilization around the world and the U.S. military is slowly starting to move out into a devastated country. From their bastion in the Pacific Northwest mechanized task forces take the fight for America onto the offensive.

In front of the military, deep into the wild ruins, go the Irregular Scout Teams. A mix of hardened military veterans and experienced civilians who can operate for long periods of time on their own. Checking the road, rail, and water transportation infrastructure, identifying groups of survivors for reinforcement or evacuation, running rather than fighting. The Teams have all the might of their task forces’ firepower on call but it’s better to be unheard by the infected and unseen by the lawless.

IST-1, the first team and the most experienced, is ordered to operate on their home ground of the ruined Upper Hudson Valley. Sergeant First Class Nick Agostine, the Team Leader, driven to fulfill his oath to the Constitution and his county while haunted by the memory of his dead family. His fellow NCO and Team Medic, Doc Hamilton, trying to keep everyone alive. Ahmed Yassir, a man without a country or tribe, deadly at a thousand meters with is calm shooting. Isaiah Jones, a giant of a man with a machine gun and a booming laugh, who grew up surrounded by violence. The fiery red head with the ice blue eyes, who is just as ready to take off an infected’s head with her shotgun as she is to put at teammate into their place with her sarcasm. Former Serbian soldier Sasha Zivcovic, who is a born killer living in his preferred element, war.

As the eyes and ears of Task Force Empire, it’s their job to save the lives of thousands of soldiers by providing accurate intelligence. That’s the mission, in theory, but incompetence, the fog of war and politics get in their way, putting the entire teams’ lives at risk.

This isn’t a book about the Apocalypse. It’s a book about the men and women of Irregular Scout Team One and how they lay their lives on the line for each other in the face of incredible danger. A book about how a bad decision or just plain bad luck can put yourself and the ones you love at risk. In the end, though, it’s a book about … Hope.

And last but not least, due to the success of the Haunted Library anthologies that were done to benefit our local small town library, I got this from the lady that manages the library!

Thank you for all you do for the library!

Here’s the information for the 2023 anthology to support our children’s programs
The premise is the story is about the Oil Patch between 1890-1930. It must be PG13,
5-8k words.

Will take submissions until August 30th.

The Haunted Libraries anthologies has made more than $1000 for the library and continues to make money every month.
We are so thankful!

Of note- It doesn’t limit your type of story, it could be a romance, cops vs. bad guys, oil tycoons, etc, just has to be ‘based’ on the oil patch and between 1890 and 1930.

You will not be paid for the story, it will be a donation for a good cause!

You can send your stories to me at oldnfo at gmail dot com.

Thanks in advance!!!

TBT…

40 years ago, this was a view we saw more than once…

Number one in the bag, good X, heading south for Kef as the sun rose after another all night burner.

h/t Jim E for the photo

Posted in TBT

Well, this could get ugly…

Looks like Guam is about to get whacked by a super typhoon. Anything military that can fly or run away has… ships have evacuated north toward mainland Japan, and aircraft have gone ‘wherever’ they were directed to go.

Residents of Guam stockpiled supplies, battened down windows and abandoned wood and tin homes for emergency shelters as Super Typhoon Mawar bore down as the strongest storm to approach the U.S. Pacific territory in decades.

Full article, HERE from Navy Times.

Folks, a cat 4 super typhoon is ugly, to put it mildly, 150 mph winds, plus water, storm surge, etc. and the typhoon warning center said it could easily make cat 5, which would be 160+ mph. This is the strongest one in over 20 years!

The closest analogy would be Katrina hitting New Orleans, but Guam is an island. There is NO place to go! At least the buildings (other than the shacks) are concrete and built to withstand the forces and high enough to be above the storm surge lines.

And Mawar was over the island last night, per the JTWC.

If you know anybody out there, say a prayer for them, and don’t bother trying to call them. A text ‘might’ get through, or an email in a day or three.

Having ridden out a couple of weaker ones over the years, I don’t envy anybody out there right now… Mother Nature is showing her strength right now.

A little humor…

To start your week!

Parents have learned:

1. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.

2. A 3-year-old is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.

3. If you spray hairspray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.

4. If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42-pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a superman cape. It is strong enough, however, to spread paint on all four walls of a large room.

5. When using the ceiling fan as a baseball bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.

6. The glass in windows (even double pane) doesn’t stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.

7. When you hear the toilet flush and the words “Uh-oh,” it’s already too late.

8. Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.

9. A six-year-old can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year-old man says they can only do it in the movies.

10. A magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day.

11. Certain Legos will pass through the digestive tract of a six-year-old.

12. “Play-Doh” and “microwave” should never be used in the same sentence.

13. Super glue is forever.

14. No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can’t walk on water.

15. Pool filters do not like Jell-O.

16. A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. foot house 4 inches deep.

17. Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise in a moving car.

18. You probably do not want to know what that odor is.

19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys do not like ovens.

20. The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy. It will, however, make cats dizzy.

21. Cats spit up twice their body weight when dizzy.

Rut Roh…

Some 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used as both fertilizer and a component in explosives, went missing as it was shipped by rail from Wyoming to California last month, prompting four separate investigations.

A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment.

Full article, HERE from KQED.

The investigation says it ‘leaked out’…

If it did, there should be traces on the roadbed, if not, it could be anywhere in the USA in the back of any kind of box truck or tractor trailer rig. As a reminder, the OKC bombing was ONE ton of ammonium nitrate.

I don’t know what to think on this one, and I REALLY don’t want to think the worst, but…

h/t Stretch

 

Oh joy…

I wonder how ‘well’ this is going to work…

Russia continues to push a steady, relentless stream of disinformation about its war of aggression against Ukraine, to lie about and cover up horrific abuses it’s committed, to try to justify committing others.

In response, the State Department has developed an AI-enabled online Ukraine Content Aggregator to collect verifiable Russian disinformation and then to share that with partners around the world.  We’re promoting independent media and digital literacy.  We’re working with partners in academia to reliably detect fake text generated by Russian chatbots…

As a system that reflects the data on which it’s trained – including the biases embedded in that data – AI can, of course, amplify discrimination and enable abuses.

It also runs the risk of strengthening autocratic governments, including by enabling them to exploit social media even more effectively to manipulate their people and sow division among and within their adversaries.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

Soooo…unproven tech is being rolled out to an NGO that is 90% funded by State and they’re going to ‘police’ Russian disinfo… Righhhtttt…

I’ma crawl in a hole and pull it in after me…

A bleg…

Folks, I KNOW more than 30 of y’all have read our anthology for Ross 248!

Click the cover for the Amazon link. We need reviews!!! HONEST reviews.

There are some really good stories by damn good authors in this one!

And I’d like to thank those of you who have reviewed Nothing but Time (99), Twisted Tropes (33), and Space Marines(33). Every review helps us indie authors, and 50 and 100 reviews does push us into a bit wider dissemination from Amazon to readers.

I understand that anthologies aren’t for everyone, but we do them to try to get new reader’s eyes on various author’s works. And no, not every story is going to please everyone either… Sigh… I wish there was a better way to do it, but honestly I don’t know how to accomplish that.

So THANK YOU if you’ve reviewed our stuff, and if not, and you read it, honest reviews are appreciated.

And speaking of ‘misinformation’…

There was this yesterday…

This lady was interviewed on the news as a “misinformation” expert, which means she’s a Democrat operative, and she lets the audience know what they should look out for so that they don’t spread fake news.

 

From Not the Bee, HERE.

I had an interesting chat with a local businessman yesterday about this very subject. One of his ‘favorite’ things to do is to ask them to explain WHY something is ‘misinformation’. He said pretty much to a person, they cannot answer and get frustrated when he just smiles and says, “So, you say it is misinformation, but you can’t say why. So whom am I to believe? You or my lying eyes.”

He said he usually has to walk away at that point, because he can’t keep from laughing.

I like the way he puts it… LOL

And I find this one from HotAir, HERE, to be hilarious! From Yale no less… Snort…

Here we go again…

I guess they’re trying to slip this one in under the radar…

A new “disinformation office” has been quietly established by the Biden administration. This office will have the authority to arrest and prosecute citizens of the United States who publish content online that is deemed to be “false” by so-called fact checkers.

According to the announcement made by Director Avril Haines on Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has established a new office to oversee the efforts being made by the intelligence community to combat “disinformation” in the United States.

Full article, HERE.

And The Intercept also chimed in, HERE.

Interestingly, it seems they will be tied in with State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which has been caught censoring Americans on Twitter, FB, and other platforms. So it’s NOT just malign foreign actors the way I read it…

Dammit…

Comments? What say you?

A little humor…

To start your week!

One Sunday, when counting the money in the weekly offering, the Pastor of a small church found a pink envelope containing $1,000.

It happened again the next week!

The following Sunday, he watched as the offering was collected and saw an elderly woman put the distinctive pink envelope on the plate. This went on for weeks until the pastor, overcome by curiosity, approached her.

“Ma’am, I couldn’t help but notice that you put $1,000 a week in the collection plate,” he stated.

“Why yes,” she replied, “every week my son sends me money and I give some of it to the church.”

The pastor replied, “That’s wonderful. But $1,000 is a lot, are you sure you can afford this.. How much does he send you?”

The elderly woman answered, “$10,000 a week.”

The pastor was amazed. “Your son is very successful; what does he do for a living?”

“He is a veterinarian,” she answered.

“That’s an honorable profession, but I had no idea they made that much money,” the pastor said. “Where does he practice?”

The woman answered proudly, “In Nevada. He has two cathouses – one in Las Vegas, and one in Reno.”

+++++++

Reborn!

Far, far away in the tropical waters of the Caribbean, two prawns were swimming around in the sea – one was called Justin and the other called Christian. The prawns were constantly being harassed and threatened by sharks that inhabited the area.

Finally, one day, Justin said to Christian, “I’m fed up with being a prawn; I wish I was a shark, and then I wouldn’t have any worries about being eaten.”

A large, mysterious Cod appeared and said, “Your wish is granted.” Lo and behold, Justin turned into a shark.

Horrified, Christian immediately swam away, afraid of being eaten by his old mate.

Time passed (as it does) and Justin found life as a shark boring and lonely. All his old mates simply swam away whenever he came close to them. Justin didn’t realise that his new menacing appearance was the cause of his sad plight.

While swimming alone one day, he saw the mysterious Cod again and he thought perhaps the mysterious fish could change him back into a prawn. He approached the Cod and begged to be changed back, and, lo and behold, he found himself turned back into a prawn.

With tears of joy in his tiny little eyes, Justin swam back to his friends and bought them all a cocktail. Looking around the gathering at the reef, he realised he couldn’t see his old pal.

“Where’s Christian?” he asked.

“He’s at home, still distraught that his best friend changed sides to the enemy and became a shark,” came the reply.

Eager to put things right again and end the mutual pain and torture, he set off to Christian’s abode. As he opened the coral gate, memories came flooding back.

He banged on the door and shouted, “It’s me, Justin, your old friend, come out and see me again.” Christian replied, “No way man, you’ll eat me. You’re a shark now, the enemy, and I’ll not be tricked into being your dinner.”

Justin cried back, “No, I’m not. That was the old me. I’m no longer a shark“

“I found Cod. I’m now a Prawn again, Christian!”

++++++++++

Two strangers get paired up at the public golf course, and just as the one man was about to tee off, the other man shouted, “Wait a minute!. That golf ball looks strange. Is that a legitimate golf ball?”

The first man replies, “Sir, let me tell you about this golf ball. It’s a NEVER LOSE EM golf ball. It has special properties that prevent me from ever losing it, no matter what.”

Second man: “That sounds like a load of shit! What happens if you hook the ball and it lands in the deep rough grass?”

First man: “Never a problem. The ball senses darkness which then starts a very loud siren. I follow the loud sound until I find myself standing over the ball. I play on. I cannot lose the ball.”

Second man: “Wait a second!!! What happens if the ball winds up in a tree?”

First man: “Never a problem. The ball senses altitude which opens a small trap door on the ball, releasing 50 feet of fluorescent pink line, at the same time the siren begins blaring again. When I locate the tree by listening for the siren. I simply tug on the pink line, the ball drops and rewinds the string. I play on. I cannot lose the ball.”

Second man: “Wait a minute! What happens if you hit the ball into a deep water trap?”

First man: “Also never a problem. The ball senses water

which opens another trap door where a small propeller extends and propels the ball to the surface. The ball then turns itself sideways where the propeller then drives the ball to the edge of the water trap. Then; the trusty siren begins to scream. I follow the sound. I locate the ball. I play on. I’m telling you I cannot lose the ball.”

The other man scratches his head, smiles, and says” I’m sold! Where can I buy one?”

First man: “Hell if I know. I found this one.”