Feeling Old

Okay, so I’ve had the same job for a while now. I’ve seen my five year mark pass, then ten, then fifteen, then twenty… next year I’ll have been here twenty-five years. And that never made me feel old, just more experienced. My younger coworkers often talk about things that happened "when they were kids." Things that, to me, feel like they only happened a couple of years ago. 

Of course, none of them remember Opryland being a theme park. Some of them don't even remember Opry Mills pre-flood, which is kind of crazy. But a couple of days ago, my coworkers were talking about how long we’d been at this job, and I found out something that felt like a gut punch:

One of my coworkers was born after I started working here. I have been working here for her entire life, and now we're working side-by-side. Somehow, framing it that way makes me feel ancient.

My Second Book Is Out

Quick FYI for those who don't follow my other sites. My second book is now on the Kindle Store:

Bloodhunters v2: Blue Blood

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.