History Repeating Itself

While I’m a firm believer in justice and allowing the culprit pay for his crime, I don’t believe we need to repeat history and convict Trump in the Senate for his obvious role of inciting the riots on the capitol last week.

He is a cancer to our country that needs to be removed and thrown away. Him leaving for Florida on his private plane just prior to the inauguration is proof he had no use for the trappings and traditions of the presidency or democracy for that matter. It’s my belief he won’t ever come back to Washington. He’ll have his flunky pilot do a fly over and flip off the newly sworn in President Biden along with the rest of the capital and more than likely the country.

It’s a safe bet he’ll not be seen nor heard from again. Why? Because he has dirty laundry he must deal with: Lawsuits, 400-million-dollar loans coming due and a whole host of possible criminal charges New York and federal prosecutors are waiting to levy against him, not to mention Putin and his outlaw gang of oligarchs who want what’s owed them.

He’s in deep doo-doo and his timing for this inciting a riot didn’t or couldn’t come at a better time. If he had done this two years ago rather than allegedly try and get the Ukrainian government to show illegal activities on behalf of the Bidens, then it would have been a slam- dunk. He would be in federal custody awaiting trial now as a result. He needs to leave the sooner the better.

So, I say let him flip off the capital and the rightfully elected leader of our country. Let him whine and carry on like a four-year-old, throw his temper-tantrum. He gets no sympathy from me or the other 80 million Americans who voted for Biden and against him, Donald J Trump.

SICKENING

I am still appalled by what occurred in our very capitol yesterday. I read the news feeds and saw the news on NBC. I just can’t believe that a sitting president would have this sickening love for power to stoke the fires of insurrection and encourage his fanatical followers to launch an attack against our very fundamental institution of democracy.

This morning after the Vice President formally certified the electoral college results, Trump finally promised a “peaceful transition of power.” It won’t bring back the life of that woman shot by a Capitol Police officer. It is too little too late. What little respect I held for this man; I have none now. His narcissism knows no bounds and his arrogance knows no humility. He has for all intents and purposes become this country’s worse president. The fact he couldn’t bring himself to concede to President elect Biden over two months ago only compounds this truth.

I’m sorry to those who believed in him and thought his presidency was so awesome and great. I’m sorry he fooled you. Five years ago my wife asked me why I didn’t like Trump and I told her because he’s a demagogue who would rather incite his will upon the people like her than offer actual solutions to the nation’s problems. After yesterday’s events, even she agrees.

It’s 6:45

It’s 6:45 on a Saturday evening a day after the new year 2021 has finally graced us with its presence.

Not much has changed except for the fact the weather is slightly warmer than normal today in Spokane. The snow we received on Wednesday, another record by the way, has begun melting. I believe it was nine inches that fell that day and night.

My inbox is cluttered with junk and more junk. The super conservative writer I follow only to use as laughing stock for my blogs, is still claiming China stole the election and no way did 80,000,000 people vote against his President Trump. “It must not stand,” he screams from his soap box. Like I said, I use him as fodder for when I want a good laugh.

The Corona virus is still alive and well while certain people who aren’t supposed to be vaccinated, are doing that very thing while the older people who do need it are standing in long lines for hours on end. It is, after all survival of the fittest. If you are too weak and infirmed to get vaccinated then obviously you must die so the healthier people get theirs.

I worked yesterday and so today I work harder to catch up for working at the job where I get paid. As a homeowner I work here for free. My macaw has begun eating my house which is the last thing I need prior to placing my house on the market.

I had a strange premonition back in elementary school. For whatever reason I picked 2020 as my death date. It almost happened but maybe it was meant for someone else. God knows too many people died that year. Let’s hope 2021 is much better.

A Christmas Wish

While Christmas isn’t my most favorite holiday, it’s definitely in the top three. I remember wanting stuff growing up. You know, those material things we want but somehow Mom and Dad couldn’t afford.

Later on in my life I was old enough and had money enough where I could buy what I wanted, and usually did, so material wants were placed on a back burner and I began to appreciate the other more esoteric dimensions of Christmas than wanting.

It is a lesson I try and place in the minds of my step grandchildren; life after all is more than giving or taking gifts. It’s after all, a relatively recent phenomena. The true meaning of Christmas, besides the birth of the Christ child, is measured in what we all wish for: family, togetherness, a safe and healthy life, and freedom from want.

So my family and friends who have supported me throughout the years, my wish for Christmas is happiness, success, and joy for everyone in the coming months and years to follow.

God bless everyone and Merry Christmas to all and a prosperous new year!

What’s in a Name?(Change)

Apparently a lot when it comes to how our nation has changed inn the past 100 years. The American Native Americans have fought for and received the name change for many sports franchises including the Washing NFL team, which hasn’t received a replacement yet and most recently the Cleveland Indians.

Related to this story is one that hits close to home. A street that bore the name of an infamous Indian fighter, was unanimously changed at a recent Spokane City Council meeting.

Colonel George Wright, like many Southern and Confederate heroes of the post Civil War movement that commemorated them, was a man who was no friend of the Native American tribes of the Spokane area in the late 1890s. His treatment of the indigenous tribes was comparable to what the Nazis did to the Jews in World War Two.

These changes are long overdue. What to rename a franchise’s name isn’t nearly as important as recognizing the wrongs of the past and correcting them in a timely manner.

Release Date

It’s official! The release date for A Man’s Passion is set for January 9, 2021. I got done with a marketing survey detailing the book’s synopsis, marketing strategies both locally and nationally, as well as Britain, and what similar books that are out there, that would compete or compliment what I’ve written.

This last part is tough because all the books that I found so far that are out in print are nonfiction tomes dedicated to Black Lives Matter or similar anti-racist tracts that are not necessarily what this book is about. Yes, it deals with a subculture of racism that seems most prevalent in the South, but its not the entire story itself. There is more to this book than that.

For a short novella, it has a lot to offer the reader and I thank writers like Mark Twain and Harper Lee who didn’t write Michener or Hemingway-like books of over 100 thousand words. My book barely tips the scales at a little over 30,000. I think Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird were around 90,000 each.

I hope my loyal readers will have the opportunity to buy my book on January 9th and enjoy what I’ve written.

The Moment I’ve Been Waiting For

Yesterday I received an email from my publisher at Austin Macauley. Hanna is the production director and stated in the email that she sent me an application for certification to have the manuscript A Man’s Passion print ready once I read through it a final time and the signed certificate back.

With the exception of one scene in the entire book that I wished edited for clarity, it is finally ready for the printers to begin having print and eBook formats produced.

Hopefully, I will start having my finished product on book shelves in book stores very soon, hopefully before Christmas.

Yes, you could argue I already am a published author through Author house: This Life, My Life after My Stroke(2012) and Amazon Four Seasons books One and Two (2018) (2020), but this is an actual publishing house that has gone well above what those other two offered. And yes, I had to donate a financial investment to get the book started because, well it’s how the publishing world works these days. It has become a collaboration between author and book seller/publisher.

Long ago when there were only a certain number of writers, kept purposefully low by the top publishing houses, one merely wrote a great book to see it get rejected numerous time until one actually made the commitment and took a gamble the book would be a commercial success. Steven King (Carrie) is one such example, along with Peter Benchley (Jaws).

Then with the advent of digital printing and Amazon, a whole new monster was created. Now the world is saturated by people who want to write the great American novel, but aren’t very good writers, competing with very good writers wanting to be financially successful but can’t, not like before when the big five publishers dictated how many books would be printed in a given year.

I had discussions with my book club coordinators and the problem is an over saturation of the market. It has of course made it nearly impossible to become successful novel writers unless you have a niche, like a fellow writer I know who has a loyal following with the gay and lesbian community. He is extremely popular and writes books of all genres that are directed toward that segment and market.

My hope with this book that I will have to help market to sell to a wide audience is the niche that is out there comes to the surface and makes my name a household name for all my future books I wish to have published.

My Writing Projects

Last night I just finished my first draft of Luke Warm. It’s about teenaged girls being abducted and the protagonist, in this case Luke Warm, an investigative TV reporter who exposes them from local, regional, and finally internationally.

Luke has a partner by the name of Nick Roberts a private detective who just lost his partner, Danielle Youngblood, a member of the Crow Tribe. The entire gambit begins with Danielle’s murder because she is searching for a missing girl feared abducted at a mall in Missoula Montana. In the middle of this is a romantic interest and a social justice angle that reflects a growing problem worldwide; sexual trafficking of adolescent girls off Native reservations being abducted, auctioned, and sold. As a backstory, Danielle’s sister and niece are abducted by a Crow elder twenty years earlier by the name of Adrian Stillwater. Adrian and Nick share a common bond; Adrian’s twin brother kills Nick’s father during a church service 30 years before.

My next project, which actually isn’t new but a complete rewrite of a draft I did last year. But my computer I was using then did not back up my story to the new computer I have now. It seemingly goes with the territory. It gave me time to think on this plot which basically involves Mark Marteau’s final case. I’m calling it Barracuda. Mark has issues with remembering things but he does remember long ago and in that far away time he tries revisiting a cold murder case just after became a bounty hunter and he bought the Plymouth Barracuda with the reward money from Old Joe’s killer. I’m still uncertain how this story will flow, since I am a pantser and not a plotter. We shall see.

So there you have it; the beginning of a new series and the end of another, which if my publisher likes it and signs off on it, should be ready in a few years down the road.

Here’s Looking at You

I guess there are two realities in this country right now, ours and Donald Trump’s. In our reality, Biden won the election and is presently sitting on his thumbs waiting for the federal government to allow him access to information related to National Security and COVID 19. Donald Trump’s reality is that the evil democrats have stolen the election, pulling off a coup attempt and the fake news is conspiring to have him overthrown. It’s more like a Hollywood movie script than reality. Is he so wacked that we should fear he might do something really stupid, like launch a nuclear strike against China or Iran? Or is he going to embarrass us by standing up at the inaugural podium to be sworn in while Biden looks foolish in the eyes of the world?

As we have learned from the media and from some people that share Trump’s views, the election was stolen and massive fraud came about from secret elements of the Democratic Party. One such individual who I believe has in his mind the complete destruction of the Democratic Party, and just the Republican Party alone to control the government, sees this scenario as a coup attempt against his beloved President.

For this person who I subscribed to only because my conservative brother in-law follows him. His opinions, like Trump are about America first, America is or should be a Christian country, nationalism versus globalism and of course Republican, conservative values versus Democratic, liberal values.

I’m not an extremist on either side of the political spectrum and for the longest time I dealt with this person only because he is a fellow writer. Last month he complained on his blog about his followers not following him anymore; his numbers were way down. A time ago my best friend and my brother in-law suggested I try to avoid writing on all things political because most of my followers are conservative and I turn them off with my ideas. So, I being the generous writer I am suggested to this fellow writer to curtail his conservative opinions; maybe that is the issue he is facing at this time.

He read my suggestion and of course was more than mildly insulted that I should dare call his opinions archaic and out of touch with the mainstream. So I guess, after seeing for myself how forty percent of the people have reacted to Trumps expositions that he is the victim of fraud and other crimes and misdemeanors from a political party bent on his demise, I shouldn’t be surprised that these extremists exist and see the reality the way they do.

I hope he finally sees the reality the same way the rest of us see it.
Here’s looking at you.

What to do Now that Alex is Gone

It wasn’t devastating news that came on Sunday that Alex Trebek had succumb to cancer. Everyone who heard the news earlier back before the pandemic that he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer knew his days were numbered. The shock is that when we all saw him in September were surprised by how he looked, not a man at death’s door but someone with a gusto for life.

He was an icon of Jeopardy for 37 years and I guess lately there were dorms and Greek houses that did Jeopardy parties, something I wasn’t familiar with when I was going to college back in the 80s. Trebek made nerdiness cool.

I didn’t start watching that program until I was in my forties and moved back with my parents. I answered about half the questions, or responded to the answers with, in the form of a question. Most were well over my head because I never much had an interest in 13 th century Flemish art or what stellar constellations were in the Milky Way.

Now that Alex is gone, and the last program that he hosted will air after December 25, I have to wonder what happens next? Will there even be a Jeopardy? If there is, who will be its host or hostess? If I had to choose, if I had the power to call the one person would accept such an honor, I’d ask Ken Jennings. I guess there are others out there such as LeVar Burton, though this is the first time I’ve heard that.

Rest in Peace, Alex, we’ll miss you.