Is reflective…
I started writing in 2014, have published 12 novels and a few short stories and novellas and been in a few anthologies.
I’m not hugely successful, I don’t write fast, and I try to get the ‘details’ right. Oh, and more than once I’ve been told I’m a storyteller, not a writer. I’m not getting rich off the books, no ‘deals’ in progress, no awards prestigious or otherwise, or anything else, but I do make a few bucks each month.
So be it. I got curious and looked at how many reviews I had sitting on Amazon, and it’s a little over 3000. I know that’s chump change compared to a ‘real’ author, but I’ll take them all with thanks! My average across all the books, etc. is 4.6 out of 5 stars, so there must be a ‘few’ folks out there that like what I write and the stories I try to tell.
What I am thankful for are the folks that support me, our Saturday supper crowd, the folks that comment on the snippets I post, and the ‘usual suspects’ that alpha/beta read, giving me HONEST feedback, my editor, and my cover artist.
And I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the experts I’ve been able to find in various areas that help me get those details right… Even if they never let me forget some of my ‘better’ screw ups… Sigh…
1/4 of the way through the next Rimworld, working on it, a short story, and pulling together an anthology of twisted tropes just for fun. I like anthologies because it gives me a chance to get other authors out there/in front of readers that might like their work, or at least give it a chance.
So I’m staying busy. Actually, I’m behind by about three months, but that’s on me because I took on some things that I knew were going to be time consuming, but needed to be done for various reasons.
I’m hoping to have the next Rimworld out early next year, and it will be followed by another Bell Chronicles. The reason I do that is that when I finished The Grey Man series, I lost quite a few readers that don’t read science fiction, so I started the western series to try to get some of them back and why I’m alternating book series.
And of course I owe a big THANK YOU to the readers out there who spend their precious $$ on my brain dribbles and post actual honest reviews! Without y’all, I’d be one of those ‘aspiring’ writers that are dying of ‘exposure’ but not getting any Benjamins… Which is really what counts.
Apparently NBC was once again ahead of the administration… First it was the Paul Pelosi story, and yesterday, the Griner release story…
Need more confirmation that our “news agencies” are actually propaganda arms for the Leftist establishment? Here you go: Old Joe Biden’s handlers have traded Hizballah-linked terrorist arms dealer Viktor Bout to Russia for America-hating WNBA player Brittney Griner, which is bad enough in itself, as Bout could end up killing Americans in large numbers. Even worse is the fact that the administration could have brought former Marine Paul Whelan out of Russian prison, but opted for Griner instead. The White House denies that it had this choice, but an initial NBC News report confirmed it. Soon afterward, however, the NBC report was quietly revised to reflect the official line.
Full article, HERE from PJ Media.
One can only wonder how many reporters NBC will be ghosting for THIS ‘screw up’ of reporting the truth…
And apparently Griner shook hands with Bout in Saudi when they were exchanged… This just gets better and better…
Any bets on whether she will kneel the first time the National Anthem is played???
Or not, depending on your point of view…
Twitter kept secret “blacklists” that included a doctor at Stanford and several prominent conservative voices that suppressed their ability to be found or heard on the social media platform, according to journalist Bari Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press and former Wall Street Journal and New York Times columnist, who launched the second chapter in Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” Thursday evening.
Full article, HERE.
And Griner is free and back in the US, but Paul Whelan and two other Americans got left in Russia ‘thanks’ to the administration’s lack of negotiating ability… Grrr…
WASHINGTON — WNBA star Brittney Griner was free Thursday after the Biden administration negotiated her release from a Russian penal colony in exchange for an arms dealer, according to a senior administration official.
Full article, HERE.
And this one is hilarious… for versions of hilarious…
Panelists on MSNBC said democracy was “on the line” Wednesday after the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a redistricting case out of North Carolina.
Full article, HERE.
According to ‘my’ reading of the Constitution, it’s pretty clear in Article 1 Section 4. Bold mine…
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
In other words, it’s NOT up to the state’s court to set rules or districts for elections…
Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.
CAN occasionally get along…
Something cute for a change!
Tis the season and all that… 🙂
It’s Army/Navy week… for the 123rd time, with the game on Saturday. Granted the USAF has already won the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, but it’s still Army/Navy…
The U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen have taken to the skies in an early assault on their Army brethren dubbed “Operation Black Knight Falling,” with a kind of psychological operations mission that would make many an intelligence officer proud.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
And a toon from 1944…
The bets between the Army and Navy folks are legendary too…
In any case, it ‘should’ be a good game!
Go Navy, Beat Army!!!
John Van Stry’s first trad pub novel drops today! Summer’s End
Click the cover for the Amazon link
The blurb-
SOMETIMES A DARK PAST CAN HAUNT YOU. OTHER TIMES IT JUST MAY BE THE ONLY THING KEEPING YOU ALIVE.
Fresh out of college with his Ship Engineer 3rd-Class certificate, Dave Walker’s only thought is to try to find a berth on a corporate ship plying the trade routes between the many habs, orbitals, and moons in the Solar System. The problem for Dave, however, isn’t his straight C average; it’s that his stepfather, a powerful Earth Senator he’s never met, now wants him dead.
Forced to take the first berth he can find, Dave ends up on the Iowa Hill, an old tramp freighter running with a minimal crew and nearing the end of its useful life, plying the routes that the corporations ignore and visiting the kinds of places that the folks on Earth pretend don’t exist.
Between the assassins, the criminals, and the pirates he needs to deal with, Dave is discovering that there are a lot of things out there that he still needs to learn.
But there’s one hard lesson he learned long ago that he’s being forced to remember: how to be ruthless.
At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
John Van Stry is a United States Air Force Veteran who worked in robotics and as a flight test engineer and as a quality and test engineer in the medical devices industry. He is a collector of motorcycles and big cats. A star of the indie publishing world, Summer’s End is his first novel with Baen Books.
I was a beta reader for this one, and it is HIGHLY recommended!
You can go HERE for an interview with John about the book with Paul Semel!
Pam Uphoff has her 10th book in the Fall of the Alliance series out- The Office Manager
The blurb-
Lord Feodor Kenzo Nix thought he’d left his hacker teen years, adventurous first job, and very not-good second job behind. Eighteen nice boring years . . . well there was that invasion but his part had been minor . . . at a nice, quiet boring office job. A reasonably well paid middle manager’s position.
But now he was not just fired, the whole Bureau was being dismantled. And when he went back home for his fiftieth birthday party all his relatives teamed up to make him look like a hot marriage prospect by giving him four servants. Somewhat sub-par servants . . .
And . . . why the call from the Inquisition?
Feo Nix is no longer bored . . . and he’s going to have to find a job quickly in an Alliance in a state of transition (closely resembling a total collapse) where the most magically powerful are scrambling to stay on top.
And last but certainly not least, if you liked the Terminal List from Amazon, there are books that are behind that. Jack Carr knows of which he writes… The Terminal List series
The blurb-
On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece’s entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government.
Now, with no family and free from the military’s command structure, Reece applies the lessons that he’s learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates. With breathless pacing and relentless suspense, Reece ruthlessly targets his enemies in the upper echelons of power without regard for the laws of combat or the rule of law.
With “crackerjack plotting, vivid characters both in and out of uniform, and a relentless pace to a worthy finish” (Stephen Hunter, #1 New York Times bestselling author), The Terminal List is perfect for fans of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and Nelson DeMille.
This series is damned good!
Edit- Fixed the broken link… No idea what happened to the other one!
Canadian gov offered to ‘assist’ another disabled Canadian vet in 2019…
Retired Canadian Army Corporal and former Paralympian Christine Gauthier is restricted to a wheelchair after surviving an accident when she was in the service.
She testified last week that she has been waiting for a wheelchair lift for her home for years, and when she expressed frustration to a Veteran Army of Canada (VAC) caseworker she was promptly offered the option of being euthanized.
“Madam, if you are really so desperate, we can give you medical assistance in dying now,” the caseworker allegedly told Gauthier in 2019.
Gauthier testified she was shocked by VAC’s “offer.”
Full article, HERE.
So this is now the 4th case of a drone offering euthanasia to a disabled vet in Canada…
Damn, just damn…
And in more news from the north-
Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada’s government is coming for people’s firearms. There will be a mass gun confiscation program, as his administration banned some 1,500 firearms with a freeze on handgun sales for the time being. Gun control advocates up north have long advocated for a handgun ban, which could be the next step amid Trudeau’s anti-gun crusade. It’s estimated that some 150,000 legally registered firearms are scheduled to be seized by the government. The rash of new gun laws comes after the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooter, which left 22 people dead. The shooter, Gabriel Wortman, was later killed by police.
Full article, HERE.
I wonder if Alberta and Saskatchewan are looking harder at becoming American states…
Writing, so you get bad humor…
Go read the folks on the sidebar!
- Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.
2. A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”
3. Two peanuts walk into a bar, and one was a salted.
4. A dyslexic man walked into a bra.
5. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”
6. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”
7. “Doc, I can’t stop singing The Green, Green Grass of Home.” “That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.” “Is it common?”
“Well, It’s Not Unusual.”8. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you,” says Dolly. “It’s true; no bull!”
9. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.
10. Déjà Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.
11. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day, but I couldn’t find any.
12. A man woke up in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, “Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs!” The doctor replied, “I know, I amputated your arms!”
13. I went to a seafood disco last week… and pulled a mussel.
14. What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh.
15. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, “Dam!”
16. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Not surprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
17. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse. “But why,” they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said. “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”
18. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt, and is named ‘Ahmal.’ The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him ‘Juan.’ Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”
19. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good). a
super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. (groan)
20. A dwarf, who was a mystic, escaped from jail. The call went out that there was a small medium at large.
21. And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh… No pun in ten did.
And you really don’t want to piss off grandma…
In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, ‘Mrs. Jones, do you know me?’ She responded, ‘Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a boy, and frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you’ll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.’
The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, ‘Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?’
She again replied, ‘Why yes, I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He’s lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can’t build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him.’
The defense attorney nearly died.
The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said,
‘If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I’ll send you both to the electric chair!!!
Welp, so much for actually HELPING our young junior enlisteds that are married and having to live on the economy…
The Basic Needs Allowance that was finally passed to help the lower ranks was supposed to go into effect in Jan, with wide use based on ‘base pay’, not including BAH (housing allowance) in the calculations for income… Supposedly…
A main point of contention around the Basic Needs Allowance has been whether service members’ housing allowances would be excluded from income eligibility calculations. Defense officials have agreed to exclude the housing allowance for some service members in the total income calculations — but only in high cost-of-living areas as determined by defense officials.
Full article, HERE from Navy Times.
Most of these kids are literally living paycheck to paycheck, and hoping/praying they can put food on the table and gas in the car to get to/from work. This move by DOD is NOT helping…
And there is never enough junior enlisted housing at most bases. I can remember having two E-6s with families sharing a house in Milpitas, CA in the late 80s, just to make ends meet. They were also drawing food stamps! There wasn’t any available on base housing, and if I remember correctly, the housing list had something like an 18 to 24 month wait…
And the military wonders why retention is down, and recruiting sucks… Doh!!!