Archive for category Uncategorized

Caught in another lie.

Everyone is talking about the shaky beginnings of the Affordable Care Act. Rightly so. But that isn’t the first time this President backed away from a promise, turned inside-out by bureaucratic and political infighting.

There’s nothing left, as far as I can tell, from the Gender Assignment Initiative that President Obama rolled out in May 2011. The one big speech, then nothing.

Regretfully.

Sadly.

The promise was so clear, there was no equivocation then.

      “Under the GAI, if you like your current gender, you can keep it. But when you’re ready to make a change you will be able to go to our website: www.usa.sex.gov. You will be able to view a menu of choices and, with a few clicks, began whatever degree of reassignment you choose. You will see, clearly presented, the exact cost of every option, and whether you qualify for assistance under the Where-You-Need-To-Be federal tax credit program.”

      “We are absolutely committed to continuum neutrality. We respect the full equality of every point on all definable scales. But, let me repeat our fundamental promise: if you are happy with your gender, you will not be required to change.”

The original website was never fully operational, difficult to log on to, and prone to lock up. But the menus were tantalizing, liberating.

  • Conviction scale.
    Absolutely certain.
    Reasonably certain.
    Curious, yellow.
    Curious, blue.
  • Degree scale.
    Reversal, complete, permanent.
    Reversal, complete, temporary, select term.
    Partial transformation, permanent.
    Partial transformation, temporary, select term.
    Surprise me.
  • Procedure scale.
    Physical, surgical and hormonal.
    Physical, hormonal only.
    Social only, wardrobe.
    Social, wardrobe and pronoun.
    Surprise me.
  • Timeline scale.
    Begin process immediately (requires credit card, charged now).
    Begin at specified date (requires credit card, charged later).
    Save in shopping basket, I’ll be back.
    Empty basket, not today.
    Surprise me.

Oh, well. That was then. Now the refusal of Congress to implement key sections of the new law, especially for setting up the Federal Gender Exchanges, has been compounded by Sequester funding cuts. A flurry of GAI cancellation and reassignment notices has already been issued by the President’s Gender Czar, almost three million in October alone. Pink slips, blue slips, purple slips, the Interior Department has pulled the rug out from under all Americans.

We will be processed one-by-one through the new sex panels, not by our own choice any longer, the assignments will be determined by quota-filling bureaucrats.

As everybody knows, those who are condemned to remember history must be prepared to repeat it.

Join today at the HOOP! website (Hands Off Our Privates!): www.choosesex.com. No contribution is too large, and no support is better than none at all.

 

Tags: ,

Without benefit of clergy.

 

At her house, her husband’s and son’s house now, we met this afternoon to celebrate the life and spirit of a friend whose body had failed. She died half a year ago, suddenly and too soon.

      Julia released four white doves, three from the large basket then, a moment after, a single bird. They shot towards the ridge behind us, whiter than any real creature could be, swooped down over the valley below, the one dove cutting across, almost colliding, synching with the flock. They circled all four once more before passing beyond the ridge and our view. The three horses in the high pasture let go their trance: they had frozen, heads up, lined up, in perfect profile, at the first shudder of the wings of the freed birds.

DOVE1, borrowed image.

Impossibly white.

 

They will get home, twenty-one air miles, Julia said, long before she will. We had sung a song, cheerily dark, read and recited poems, holding close in memory, at the same time letting go of Dory’s spirit. The Royal Black Cherry settled into its hole with help from a hundred hands. Inside, the feast was waiting.

Live long, Dory Brown, in the hearts of family and friends, in the aggregated recollection of all your intersecting communities.

 

 

She seems nice. Edit, adit, obit: ever a crossword.

I met her on the internet, I replied to her ad. Smooth sailing, surely, thence-from-there-forward.

She’s freelance, doesn’t work for a house. But her eye is good, and relentless. Some degree of compassion, also, I’m almost sure. Trust but verify. If you can.

Rates are within trade norms, fuzzy edges, though between the copy- and line- options.

But Ghost Walk is a big book, many pages, many words, many hours. Is she up to it? And is the edit worth the fee? Measured along what scale, or against what result?

 

Book Three.

Cover

 

I think so. But there is not a more intimate relation than a writer with an editor. Success in collaboration is not guaranteed nor in any way insurable. How will this end? All previous winnings bet on one number, on one spin, with no hedging on the red or even halves. What would Geoffrey do? What would Ellen do? So much easier to write their parts than mine.

Oh, look, that’s it: edge of the cliff. To the metal, Thelma, fly! Where’s my blankey?

 

Tags: , , ,

What Sebelius should have said.

I am so thankful and pleased to find such overwhelming Republican support for our new health care system. Everyone is now pulling together to make the system work as smoothly and effectively as possible. This is such a welcome change from the past several years, all the votes to repeal, all the efforts to weaken or defund or destroy the Affordable Care Act. Now all of you are as anxious as I am that the federal exchange website gets all glitches fixed posthaste so people can sign up by the millions, just as we all want them to and find good plans, affordable plans for themselves and their families.

I’ll admit I expected y’all to just sit back and gloat, with I-told-you-so smirks, maybe sometimes waving little train-wreck banners. But, no such thing. You’re standing up for our new law and demanding we make it all work properly, right now. Thank you, thank you.

 

Tags: , , ,

Sage advice: everything but the squeal.

 

       I was twelve when we visited relatives in Austin, Minnesota, home to a Hormel hog-processing plant as well as to my cousins. I declined my father’s suggestion that I should take a tour of the famously efficient facility. Hogs walked in at one end, packaged meats were trucked away from the other. He thought I should know where bacon and pork chops come from, before they’re stacked in grocery store coolers. I thought I already knew more than enough about that, and had no wish to watch hogs die, however humanely the deed was done.

      I was wrong, of course; not that I ever told him. Twenty years later, when we picked up Nerissa in two halves for the pig-roast and a hundred butcher-paper-wrapped pieces of Milton, sliced and ground and cured, for the freezer, for the winter, from the slaughterhouse in Tennessee, I remembered the afternoon in Austin. Not that I ever told him. We learned it was better not to give our pigs names, and some of us learned it was better to eat less or not any pork. The slogan we worked by in those days (the kindest of farmers) was: happy meat is good meat.

      I missed that tour, but I did hear and still remember the Hormel facility’s slogan, celebrating their thoroughness, making mucilage and jowls and tanned skins and pickled feet and fertilizing blood, as well as the more familiar cuts: we use everything but the squeal. A laudable effort assuredly, then as now. I leave it up to you whether to linger over the squeal.

 

A wise guy.

Fragrant.

 

      Now that I kill people, professionally, on a regular basis, I have found a new sense for the Hormel slogan. When you take a life, in fiction, or in war, just as when you raise or hunt animals for meat, there is a moral aspect you neglect at your peril. You owe your victim, or game, or livestock, in the most profound sense.

      I don’t like the “cozy” mystery convention that you kill some inconsequential stranger, or a character nobody else in the book much likes, to get your story going, forgetting instantly that the dead body ever belonged to a real daughter or bride-groom or economist, albeit a fictional one. That’s using only the squeal, and leaves the rest to rot. Murder rends a family, a neighborhood, a committee, a swimming team. A horrible hole torn. You must tell that cost, or the story doesn’t matter, the puzzle doesn’t matter, your other characters are cutouts, and their jeopardy cannot move your readers.

      Present everything, use everything. Including the squeal. It is better not to make sermons or long faces, but you must let the weight show. Then you can burn sage leaves and purify your scene. But save some for the sausage, it is the essential spice.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Heavenly blue.

      People of a certain age recall when Morning Glory seeds were not made deliberately toxic, not even Pearly Gates White or Heavenly Blue.

Full bloom.

Glorious.

 

      After the peak, unlike us, they’re prettier than before.

 

End of the day.

We’re done.

      We’re safer, though, right? Unless we’re a bird or a squirrel.

      Ghost Walk is finished, the final big edit. Final read through, then publication. Question is, do I set a number of  agent rejections before I send it up to Kindle? Hate those letters. But I do love bricks and mortar, paper and ink. And with a non-rejection, I’d be eligible for the grown-up clubs, though there’d be no reason left why I’d wish to join. It’s a little trippy to contemplate.

      Suggestions, anyone?

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,

Retirement today, a country apple tree.

      We wake up every day and do our work, until suddenly, but not unexpectedly, we just can’t. Who takes over, when we’re done?

 

Sentinal tree down.

York apple.

      This season’s heavy yield, century-old damage to the trunk, and gravity — versus the tenacity of the roots, the will-to-stand projecting upwards through the small remnant of live bark (less than a quarter circumference), plus support from the locust props — resolved into a tipping point. Expected for all thirty-eight of our years living adjacent, the remarkable old tree pressed up in defiance and survived season after season. All done now, after almost a century of  making bloom for bees, keeper apples (Yorks, that still have snap the following March if well-cellared), drops for cider and the deer, and a lattice of branches for a hundred birds staging visits to the feeders it held. And cool green shade.

      Our national government today, after two-hundred-some years (the some depending upon whether you begin with the Declaration or with the Constitution) is braced between forces that would pull it down and forces that would sustain it. Stability and continuance are not given, not even the norm, in the history of the world, for national governments. Not a super-majority or even a plurality, just a sufficient chunk of nihilists (end-days seekers, zombie apocalypsers, witless ideologues, the psychopathically greedy) can tug the roots loose.

      We keep surviving, year after year. But one morning we may go to the window and see that, overnight, it all came down. Let’s not allow this. We need our national tree. Just as, at this moment, it needs us.

 

 

Tags: , , ,

Incidental garden.

     

      At the end of a story, the final reveal wants this inevitability. Here it is, and it could not be any different. The past three hundred pages have brought us to here, precisely here. Action, characters, narrative — resolved to this. Would that it could ever comprise such intricate texture and integration of form.

One layer of the biosphere.

Lichen bloom.

 

        By local legend, lichens require, and their presence proves, clean air. Seems lichely. These assemblies are not something a human can do, only allow to happen, if all conditions are right, and decades pass without a catastrophic interuption. A goddess is near.

 

Tags: ,

Ballet in the park.

 

      Lovely luck: the weather was mild and still and dry. The dancers pulled themselves and each other through stillness, reaching, leaping, turning, solo and unison and cannon and corps. Living musicians played to a live crowd, children mirrored the dancers, back and forth, through the audience. An hour-and-a-half outside of time.

 

2013-10-04_19-37-56_226

      At that time, 7:30 pm on the 4th and fifth of October, 2013, in that place, the Roger McGuire stage in the Pack Place Park, in Downtown Asheville, North Carolina, seven lovely dances blessed the evening.

 

 

Tags: , ,

Free! Free at last!

 

      Special Kindle promtional deal, from 3-7 October 2013, Thursday through Monday: both of these titles are free. Penny savings for the pound foolish.

      You must have to have a Kindle to play, either a Kindle device or a Kindle ap (also available free from Amazon for PC, Mac, IPhone, Android and most recent model washers and dryers).

 

 

 

            Far better to regret what you have done than what you have not done. Enjoy anyway.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Go big, princess.

      A carolina wren danced with a pin, dropped two feathers, and demanded with a voice as large as she is little, that somebody pay attention.

Feathers and pin.

Pin for scale.

      This happens, she said. I didn’t ask for it, and you didn’t ask, but you mustn’t let it pass. Do your Fletchers take whole birds for their arrows? Or only drops, like you? Please infer no judgement, we have a long codependence and there is both honor and utility in voicing a true flight, though we might prefer to know our own old age.

       Then, I think, I was supposed to wake up.

 

 

 

Tags: , , , ,

Magic from below.

      Between here and there an underground lifeform blooms in the air for a while.

Magic.

Amanita?

      If you cannot identify with certainty, see with your eyes only.

      Sometimes, in the middle of a chapter you thought was under your control, such a bloom breaks through the mast and startles you. I fit here, right here, make it so.

 

Tags: , , ,

I’ll show you mine …

 

      Deep into that darkness peering, wondering, fearing. The city mouse has city worries.

2013-09-13_00-47-46_418

Come here often?

            While the country mouse

2013-09-14_14-23-39_748

Branch

watches an entirely different channel. But predation is complex, ubiquitous, and essential.

      Plot honesty means it’s all there, hidden in plain sight.

 

 

 

Tags: , , ,

Sometimes, before you settle, you circle.

      Beauty gobsmacks.

Baleful.

Hay there.

Shroom.

Makes you larger.

Cluster.

Petal omnicolor.

Sunshine reflected.

Gold rush.

Centered.

Burgundy on fire.

Orange.

Mufti.

      Recharge here. You cannot overcharge. And then resume the work. Letter by letter.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Strip Assad

      He’s a medical doctor, an ophthalmologist. Take away his license to practice medicine. The only target is Bashar, and the shot cannot miss. It goes to the man himself, to his understanding of who he is. It would sting more than anything cruise missles could do (unless he is, oops, incinerated accidentally).

Tags: ,

Knocking at the door.

      As a rule, you get only what you go after. But sometimes visitors come to you, uninvited, but not unwelcome.

One of a pair.

Fawn.

      Some visitors are anticipated, but land early.

Fallen but unforgettable

Maple rag.

       And there are visits, not uncommon, but remarkable in the details. 

Eastern garter snake.

Stored sunshine.

       Paradise with mildew and stinging insects, is paradise, all the same. Which you can prove simply by seeing who comes along to share it with you.

      The final edit of a novel is a long long slog, if only because final never ends. You cannot enter a paragraph without making a change, for the better, you hope, or fixing an error. The tenth pass is the charm. Ghost Walk will be published in the next few weeks. Until then, I welcome visitors who are beautiful and silent and arrive when my eyes are screen sore.

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Harvest home.

      You kill back the grass and till the soil. Add compost, manure, phosphate, lime, and till again. Plant the seeds and plant the seedlings, mulch and weed and water and spray. Then the flow flips, and the yield comes inside, comes for dinner.

2013-08-18_14-51-16_644

       Weeks later, months later, the pay-back exceeds expectation. Excellent fruit.

2013-08-18_14-52-17_920
      Like a novel growing in the mind, only a much quicker yield, and edible, suculent in fact beyond belief. 

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

It was a very good day in the neighborhood.

 

     Flutter by the butterfly bush.

 

2013-08-04_17-30-39_234 2013-08-04_17-29-56_34 2013-08-04_17-30-48_727

 

      Sometimes, for a while, nothing is wrong.

Tags: , ,

Loitering with intent.

      Really? Just one day? Does it concentrate wonderfully the mind of the swallowtail? One day in the air, in the sun, then eggs under a leaf, your death, then a cocoon and a pupa and a larva, an interval of destructive dining. Eventually, there’s another day, but not yours. You gotta really be hoping it doesn’t rain. On your day.

2013-07-28_14-05-17_747

Flower Power

 
 A day in the life. The life in a day.

Tags: , , ,

Character driven.

      Whenever I’ve gotten seriously stuck in a story, almost always it is a character who takes my hand and leads me through. Generally it’s a character already established in the story, with all the attributes necessary to solve the problem already attributed. An author has to trust the characters, and sometimes get out of their way.

      We make up the stories, to begin with. But once underway a true story (true fiction) will be found to contain what its telling takes. The characters, once set in motion, in a context, live out their tale. Authors are not stenographers for a muse. But that’s often not a terrible metaphor for the first draft of a story. Nor are we editors who clean up the wordy mess the muse has spewed, unreadalbe until tightened and focused, or who flesh out the telegraphic hints the muse has tapped onto the wire. But sometimes it feels that way.

      There’s never any help, taking the first to the finished draft. That’s all on us. And it is a long, long grind: letter by letter, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter. You don’t do it once. You do it relentlessly, over and over. Ten times, end to end, is probably a good average number of passes.

      By the time all that’s done, we have no doubt our names belong on the cover. But sometimes, during that wild giddy wondorous first phase, we’re sure we should be sharing the credit with … well, somebody or something not entirely of our making.

      But then we think how dumb it would sound, to share with our own characters. Dumb, except maybe to another author.

Tags: , , , ,

Argument from geometry.

      When Zimmerman stopped his car, Martin was walking away. He got out, against the advice of the 911 operator and Neighborhood Watch protocol, because he thought he would lose sight of Martin. His testimony. Every second that passed, Martin was one step farther away. If Zimmerman walked in the same direction, but more slowly, Martin would probably not have seen him, and the distance between them would have grown. If he had walked at the same speed as Martin, the distance between would have remained the same, and there would have been little chance of an altercation.

      Thus it is demonstrated: Zimmerman closed the distance, he walked faster, he pursued, he initiated.

      And Martin became aware of someone closing on him, alone in the rainy dark. Who? Not a cop. Why?

      How did Martin respond? He could have have run away. He could have stopped, turned, and waited, or even moved towards Zimmerman. What did Zimmerman say? What did Martin say? Who touched or pushed or punched first? Who was more afraid? Why wasn’t a brief conversation enough to resolve things?

      All unknowable, unless you are Zimmerman. My guess is Martin declined to accept the authority Zimmerman asserted. Lacking command presence, a badge, a uniform, or any actual authority, Zimmerman pulled what he had, his gun. In terror, Martin lunged, Zimmerman fired. Or Martin punched him first, not liking the guy who chased him down, fearing a mugging.

      Point is Zimmerman didn’t get the submission he was seeking, so he killed the kid. And there isn’t a narrative to excuse that.

      Quod Erat Demonstratum

      Tighter still: didn’t like the look of that boy, so he killed him. He was frightened, of course he was. Repeat.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Stand by your ground, as amended, judge & jury.

      I missed a crucial part of the Florida law, and it is a part of most of the stand-your-ground laws around the country. I feel bad that I missed it, but so did most commentators, and so did the judge (in so far as jury instructions went).

      There’s an instigator exception: if you picked the fight, if you initiated the altercation, you cannot claim the stand-your-ground defense. You can still claim common-law self-defence: you thought your life was in danger, so you did what you had to do. But you might have to prove, or at least argue convincingly, that you had no chance to retreat or descalate. Could you have pulled your gun, and backed away? For instance. And you might be challenged about exactly how and why you got into the situation. You can’t just play the get-out-of-jail-free card.

      There is no real first-hand testimony about the sequence of events, who did or said what first, except Zimmerman’s version (via interviews and videos and statements — he didn’t testify in court). So he might still have won the case. But the dubious jurors might have hung on a little longer, and persuaded some of the others.

      The judge did it.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Stand your ground: one above, one under.

      George Zimmerman is not guilty. Probably the correct verdict. There has to be doubt about exactly what happened. And under the Florida law, regardless of how he got there, even if fully culpable for creating the situation, how can it be proved he was not afraid for his life? Had Martin killed him, having grabbed the gun, say, Martin’s verdict should also have been not guilty, under Florida’s stand-your-ground standards.

      There is ascribable guilt. The state of Florida made the law that allows the survivor of any deadly altercation to be judged not guilty: I tried to rob the guy, your honor, but he pulled a gun, so I had to stab him. The state of Florida allowed a person with a history of violence to own and legally to carry a gun. The shill of the gun manufacturers, aka the NRA, and all the second amendment hysterics who have pushed carry laws through in Florida, and in all states (now Illinois has fallen), their culpability is clear.

      Don Quixotie’s lance goes snicker-snack against these, the craven and the cynical and the delusional, but they are unhurt, nor a scratch, nor a tinge of remorse.

      Or course, none of it is about race. Unless you find that almost all of those who are pleased with the verdict are white, and all but a vanishing whisper of black persons are displeased or saddened by the verdict. Then, oops, we’re hip-deep in race. Doggone, that’s not behind us yet? Yes, it is behind us, still, and alongside, and in-our-face.

      The edges have blurred. But white people increaslingly desparate to keep power and priviledge incarcerate as many not-white as they can (the war on drugs), and ward off the dilution of immigration with deportations and ‘border security.’  The white persons who repudiate these motivations and tactics often as not allow the policiies to continue, holding their noses, passively accepting the prolongation of their privileges.

      Zimerman’s attorney is probably correct that, had the races been reversed, there would have been no trial. There would have been a quick plea deal and a very long incarceration. Some of our contradictions may yet shake out: a pot-smoker black president and a black attorney-general enforcing pot laws, a black supreme court justice voting against the kind of affirmative action that powered his elevation. It’s fabuoulsly entertaining, for those of us not dead or in jail.

 

Tags: , , , ,

Hack attack: why ever?

     My service provider wouldn’t say how many of their clients were affected. Several hundred at least. Their servers were entered and compromised by an entity calling itself  Islamic Ghosts TeaM. What you saw if you came here yesterday was an all black screen with this logo at the top:

      What purpose or motive may have been engaged is unknown. No injury beyond interruption, no content damaged or removed.

      Weird, no?

Tags: , , , ,

Work in Progress: Drosselmeyer Chronicles

 

2013-06-29_09-42-21_879

       The page header tab above will take you to the first chapter of the book I’m currently working on. Geoff and Ellen get to stay home for this one, it takes place in Roanoke. They are supernumeraries in the Roanoke Festival Ballet production of the Nutcracker.  Events unfold. Comments welcome (text riddled with typos, I know, it’s rough).

 

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

And the band plays on.

   The boys in the band, they play and they play. But nobody throws underwear, or room keys, at a clay pot.

The boyz.

2013-06-01_17-59-31_762

Tags: , ,

Recursion

2013-06-09_16-01-44_777

Tags: , ,

y’all

This was my answer, probably too much of one.

Hi, Sadie:

Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you liked Fit to Curve and I hope you will like Heart Attack, too. The third book (Ghost Walk) is just about ready to publish, the forth (Little Fishes) is finished, first draft, but needs cleaning. I’m currently working on the fifth (Drosselymeyer Chronicles).

The twin/triplet subplot sort of grew by itself. The sisters engage in lots of coming and going, often concealed, and they see (and can comment on) the comings and goings of the other characters. They helped to uncover and connect. They came from a woman I met who talked about her “twin sister” and got me truly confused because there seemed, from her stories, to be more than one. I asked if she had two sisters, who were twins (not including her), thinking I had figured out the only explanation. No, she said, they were all twins, also her fourth sister, but whenever they said triplet or quadruplet people pulled away, because it made them freaks. So they all just said “twin,” because it was true, and kept people from having weird reactions. One of those filed away things.

English is funny with second person plurals. You/your/yours used to be plural, with thee/thy/thine for singular. When you became both, 4-500 years ago, it could be confusing whether somebody meant one person or more than one. Now we use a bunch of plural versions: youse, you guys, you all, you-all, y’all, ya’ll, yawl, all y’all. They tend to be regional, but move around over time. What I like about you-all is that the meaning is clear. A yawl is also a little boat, ya’ll sometimes means “you will” (ya’ll have to buy some new tires). The pronunciation I intend is yawl. You’re right that anybody who sounds out the you in you-all is a non-southerner being condescending or trying to sound chummy. There’s always a tiny bit of another vowel sound in y’all: yi’all, ye’all, yu’all but it’s so tiny a catch sound it gets weird and wrong if you try to spell it out. I think it varies from place to place around the south, but I couldn’t begin to say which goes where. You’ve lived in more southern places than I have. Does this last make any sense?

My wife agrees with you, and tried to get me to use y’all several years ago. I think, between her arguments (she’s an Atlanta girl) and now you, that I was wrong. There’s still the sticky business of y’all versus ya’ll. The second one has strong champions, even though it’s clearly the underdog. The argument is that it comes from ya or ye for you, joined to all. Besides which, it was favored by Faulkner and Hemingway and McCullers. I think I’ll stick with y’all unless I mean to mark someone as not southern (neither of my main characters is, by birth; Ellen’s ear is good, Geoff’s not so much, he could get it wrong).

All of this is moot, in the part of the south my wife and I moved to thirty-five years ago, from Massatusets. Up here, in the hills, it’s not y’all at all, but yu-uns and yur-uns and (my favorite) yursensus. This is the land of chimleys and bullnozers and bob-war, where visitors told it’s time to go home hear “yu-uns stay with us now.” and people “kindly like” things and other people.

On “couple things” versus “couple of things,” I’ll have think about that. I say and write both. I think “couple of” is more correct expository writing, not necessarily so in conversation. “Couple things I need to know: is the gun loaded, are you left-handed?” But if you’re right about “a lot of ‘couple things,’” that’s a tic, and that’s lazy, and not good. Thanks for noticing. And thanks again for taking the trouble to write.

Bud

Tags: , , , ,

you-all

Sadie said it would be okay to use her email as a post.

Mr. Crawford–

I just completed reading Fit to Curve I have never contacted an author before, but I was compelled to write you as soon as I finished the book. Two things—the first is that I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was well written, the plot was intricate but believable, and the characters came to life on the pages. I did wonder about the inclusion of the little side mystery of the twins who turned out to be triplets, but of course that is your prerogative as the author and did not make my enjoyment of the book any more or any less. There was something that bothered me throughout the book, though, and that is what prompted me to write to you. Before contacting you, I looked up your background to verify that you are not a native southerner. I see that you are presently living in North Carolina, but I have to tell you I was really put off throughout the book by your use of the term “you-all”. If you have lived in North Carolina any length of time, you have to have noticed that in that state as well as most, if not all, southeastern states, the form of address for a group of two or more people is “y’all”, pronounced “yawl”. While my home state is Alabama, I have lived in Georgia and Virginia and have spent considerable lengths of time in every other southeastern state over the last 65+ years. The only time I have heard the term “you-all” is from non-southerners who just do not hear the distinction between the two terms. I am aware that the contraction “y’all” is a shortening of the term “you-all”, but it is still a shortened version that is used extensively, and it just bothers me to see it written incorrectly. One other thing, there is also a colloquialism that I’m thinking is a southern thing. I really don’t know what the correct grammatical version is, but we generally speak of “two things” but a “couple of things” rather than a “couple things”. I only bring this up because there were a lot of “couple things” in the book.

Thank you for providing me with enjoyment and entertainment, sans an obvious agenda, political or otherwise, other than entertainment. I am assuming Fit to Curve was your first book, and I look forward to reading the remaining ones. When I read a new author who has more than one publication, I try to read the books in order of publication. Please think about a possible correction concerning the “you-all” term, though.

Sadie K. Osburn

Tags: , , , ,

more about you

      There’s hundreds of these maps, made by Joshua Katz at North Carolina State University. Many follow the westward-sinking Mason-Dixon line here, but many, in fascinating ways, do not. Here’s a link to the project: https://www4.ncsu.edu/~jakatz2/project-dialect.html. Worth many long looks.

      The immediate interest for me was the continuation of the discussion started by Sadie K. Osborne about correct southern usage. From the map it looks like the form I picked is only common along the west-facing coast of Maryland and a big chunk of central Kentucky. Clearly in the green, where my stories have been set, “it’s y’all, all y’all, dammit!” Or “ya’ll.”

plural you

plural you

 

roogmaralty

This site gets 20-30 spam comments each day  from something that calls itself: roogmaralty. Several hundred per month.

Here’s a sample:

We are eruditeness how NOT to more than payday loans uk arises as a issue of the lack of stringent deferred payment checks from some companies. https://wxw.paydaydiamond.co.uk/letpaydayloans/ loans – payday Commendation for this type — but we assure you, the icon supra is in fact the Play Station Phone you’ve foresighted been waiting for. https://wxw.paydaydiamond.co.uk/letpayday – loans/

The salad is fresh but without charm or sense or interest of any kind. The sole purpose is dissemination of the embedded urls.

More ugly, or more stupid? Provocative? Vapid, viscous, vacant.

Has anyone ever encountered this entity?

Spam-bot obviously, but behind it, some human impulse or purpose. Or, maybe not. Which would be worse?

Sigh.

 

 

Andy, again: covers for Ghost Walk & Little Fishes

Andrew Campbell has made two new covers, for books three and four in the series.

 

GhostWalkLittleFishes 

Good work, I think, as usual for Andy.

Corporations are my people, friends.

I’m sorry, I have forgotten who said: he would believe corporations were people the day Texas executed one. Looks like a chance this day, in West, Texas, to give it a try.

To borrow another unattributed phrase: Atlas shrugged, again. I’ll dig out the sources if anybody wants them.

die-a-virgin-tickle-itis

Medical condition afflicting young girls. Whenever a boy touches her, she begins giggling uncontrollably.

Connection

 

Larry

Sill still