My First Book is Out!

My first book is now on Amazon. You can buy it here:

Bloodhunters v1: Bad Blood

Or you can find out more about it here:

Bloodhunters Blog

Quick Note On Writing

One of the best feelings in the world is coming across a short story you wrote years ago, and not remembering how it ends. That whole feeling of “what’s about to happen?” is that much better when you know it’s something you wrote. Especially when you come across funny scenes and clever twists that you don’t remember writing. I swear, either my memory is going or I have elves in my attic. Either way, it’s a great feeling.

Book Coming Soon

 I'll be self-publishing my first novel soon. I've got a few test readers looking at it now, and if it doesn't need any major changes, I should have it out in the next couple of months.

Once it's out, I'll post links to all my blogs telling you where you can buy it. If you wanna. In the meantime, I've started a separate blog for it here.

Dream: Robin Williams D&D

I'm blogging less lately because I'm working on a novel, which takes up most of my writing energy. But last night's dream was a doozy, so I wanted to jot it down. It was somewhat inspired by the Time Traveler's wife. If you haven't seen the HBO series, you really should. It's much better than the theatrical version, and I'm sorry to hear they canceled it before the second season. I really hope it gets saved by a letter writing campaign or something, just so they can wrap up the story.

In the dream, Robin Williams was in my D&D group. He had already passed away in the dream, but apparently he had been able to time travel when he was alive. Unlike the Time Traveler's wife, he could control when and where he went, though he couldn't change world events. When he got his diagnosis, he wanted to see how our campaign ended before his disease got worse. So he jumped into the future a bunch times, and played through the rest of the sessions as a marathon.

Based on some things he said in our gaming sessions, I also suspect he had jumped far enough in into the future to see all the crap coming up - COVID, Trump, etc - and didn't want to have to live through all of that.

From our point of view, he was in our group, he died, we mourned, and then he just kept showing up to sessions. We asked him questions, but he refused to answer very many of them. But he did make the DM promise not to artificially extend the campaign just to get more sessions with Williams. At the end of one session, the DM announced that all we had left to do was fight the final boss, so the next session would probably be our last.

When the day of the final session arrived, my car wouldn't start, and I didn't want to miss our final day playing with Williams. So naturally, I borrowed my neighbor's riding lawnmower and drove it to the game. We were playing at some sort of rec center. We knew it was going to be the last time we saw Williams, so the players had brought cake and put up some party decorations. When we heard that Williams had arrived, we all went out to the parking lot to greet him.

He showed up wearing a sequined outfit that would have made Elton John look drab. For some reason, Lady Gaga was with him (I don't think she was in our D&D group). She was dressed to match. They performed a musical number together right there in the parking lot. Unfortunately I woke up halfway through the song.

Is It Time To Ban Religion?

No, of course not. My feelings toward religion are the same as they’ve always been: Believe what you want, worship how you want, as long as it doesn’t affect me.

Except, you Christians aren’t holding up your end of the bargain. Each and every year you try to pass more and more religiously-motivated laws. And they aren’t even actually based on religion, so much as misinterpretations of religion. You can’t show me a single verse in the Bible that states abortion is a sin. But you’ll happily vote for anti-abortion laws that ruin other people’s lives.

Every year. More laws against abortion. More laws against LGBT people. More laws against women. And then random laws that come out of nowhere, like requiring schools to post “In God We Trust” in schools.

YOU broke the contract. I was perfectly happy with the old system, where everyone lived how they wanted, and we all just stayed out of each other’s way. But when Christians try to force non-Christians to live by their rules, that’s when they go over the line.

So yes, you certainly deserve to be told, “Your religion is illegal.” You certainly deserve to have your religious freedoms taken away. As much as you like to shout “I’m being persecuted! I’m being persecuted!” it’s never actually been true. At least, not in your lifetime. If there were any justice in this universe, you would find out what religious persecution actually means.

So no, even if I had the power to make religion illegal, I wouldn’t. As much as you deserve it, and you really do deserve it, that would still be hypocritical of me. Because I still believe in religious freedom. The freedom to follow whichever religion you want, and the freedom not to follow any of them.

But there is one thing I would do if I had unlimited power. I would make it illegal to pass any religious-based laws (you know, like it already says in the First Amendment), and any politician who even proposes a religion-based law would immediately be banned from holding office ever again.

...And I'm not happy with you either.

The Joys of Herding Cats

Ugh, this week was a mess. I had to wake up to an alarm three days in a row, due to various doctor appointments and such. Wednesday morning was the worst. I had to get up at 5 AM (I work nights, so usually I wake up around 8 AM), wrangle the cat, and drive her across town to the cat dentist for her follow up appointment.

Finding the cat was the hard part. On Tuesday Kara heard us mention the vet, and she spent the next 24 hours in hiding. Smart cats are a pain. Wednesday morning she was hiding under the couch. This was probably the most annoying place she could have hidden, because our house is so cramped, that it’s difficult to move the couch. We had to move a few other pieces of furniture to get the couch away from the wall, only for Kara to hide under another piece of furniture.

I thought I had her, and then she just sort of dissipated. I blinked, she turned into a dust cloud. It’s a cat thing. We spent the next half hour tearing the room upside down looking for her. Upending furniture, moving various things around, trying to catch our breath. We’re not as young as we used to be, and moving furniture around at 5 AM is not how I like to wake up. I’d closed all the doors in the house so she couldn’t run into any other rooms. But the cat was just… gone.

Finally I pulled open the curtains, and she was just sitting in the window sill, laughing at me. I picked her up and put her in the cat carrier. Usually she fights me on that part, but this time she was fairly complacent. The last few times she went to the vet, I used up half the Band-Aids in the house. This time she growled once, but didn’t struggle or scratch me. I think she’d decided I’d suffered enough. I still wound up bleeding, though. Apparently there’s an exposed nail on the back of the couch, that I scraped against trying to reach her earlier.

It was an easy enough appointment, just a follow up. She’s recovered nicely from her oral surgery two weeks ago. She no longer has any teeth, and we’re still experimenting with finding the perfect wet cat food. When we got home, Kara forgave me as soon as I let her out of the cage. I’m very thankful that she’s caught up on her shots, so this is the last time she has to see a vet for a good while.

Dream: Gators and Beholders

Sometimes my dreams have a semi-lucid, fourth wall quality to them. I'll feel like I'm acting out the dream as if I'm making a movie, and all the characters are just actors. This means that I know I can't really be harmed, so I'm not scared no matter how intense things get. On some level I know every monster is just a guy in a suit, like the ending of Altered Beast.

Last night I was in a swamp, holding an alligator on a leash. The dream's "script" said that the gator was supposed to help me, to lead me to some bad guys like a police dog. But the gator kept biting me instead. Gator's gonna gate, I guess. The bites didn't hurt; it felt like he had Nerf teeth. But it was still annoying, and I kept yelling "No!" at it.

Then the gator ran off, and attacked a small child. It didn't hurt the kid either, but I still had to stop it. I jumped on the gator's head (oddly enough, I had played a bit of "Pitfall!" last night before bed) and it released the child. But then I was so angry that I started pounding on the gator like Ralphie fighting the bully in "A Christmas Story". 

That woke me up, but I fell right back asleep. 

The next dream had sort of a "Snakes on a Plane" plot, but the tone felt more like Alien. I was on a cruise ship, and a bunch of Beholders were loose, attacking the passengers. (If you're not a D&D player, a Beholder looks like a floating head with a single large eye, a gaping mouth, and a bunch of smaller eye stalks that can fire different kinds of magical beams).

But these weren't your typical D&D Beholders. One looked like a giant hand, with eyes on the end of each finger. Another looked like a beach ball, with smaller beach balls on its eye stalks. It could fire more beach balls out of its eyes, which would bounce around before exploding. That scene had a "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" vibe to it, with circus music in the background.

Another Beholder looked 8-bit, reminding me of the movie Pixels. It could summon Atari characters to fight for it, like the helicopter from Chopper Command. (Okay, I played more than just Pitfall last night). The helicopter attacked not by firing weapons, but by landing on groups of passengers. Another Beholder had a very human-looking face, giving it an uncanny valley appearance.

I didn't actually see any of these monsters defeated. I mostly spent the dream running around from room to room, running into different Beholders and watching them attack groups of passengers. The dream still had a movie quality to it - I never really felt like I was in danger, I just ran because it was "in the script". 

Even with all that going on, I still had time to stop and casually visit the ship's gift shop.