Lauryne Wright

Republican political ads here in southern New Mexico are chock full of gaslighting about what’s going on with the Republican Party and in the nation in general. Especially with one candidate in particular, Gregory G. Cunningham running for the US House of Representatives against our incumbent Democratic Congressman Gabe Vasquez. Gaslighting, for those who might […]

There’s so much nonsense going on I should write about now that we’re rapidly approaching early voting in New Mexico, and I probably will next month, including gobsmacking ridiculousness of local Republican ads. But on this first day of autumn, I’m determined to keep it positive. Helping me do that was a movie seen this

Last week I read a Writer’s Digest online article that hit me in the solar plexus, given it was already a difficult time due to the 9/11 anniversary, an event that still holds a great deal of residual trauma for me with respect to the Pentagon in particular. This year, of course, it was compounded

On this Labor Day I ponder the way we in the US treat immigrant laborers, especially the hubris of labeling them “aliens,” much less “illegal.” Our nation and its highly flawed mechanisms for dealing with immigration have a long way to go. Because we’re going backward as opposed to forward when it comes to the

As August draws to a close in the waning days of summer, I’m watching four kittens frolic in my yard, clawing their way up tree trunks for the first time and treating my pool loungers like a jungle gym. And I myself am preparing for a new challenge come September in my fiction writing endeavor

Watching initial episodes of Roswell, New Mexico from 2019 on Netflix this week was at startling as rereading my first two Other Worldly novels published in 2020, Alienable Rights and Feeling Alienated, and being utterly confused. Wait, what? Aren’t these atrocities against humanity committed by ICE and other unidentifiable thugs exactly what’s happening right now

“I didn’t exactly choose the ‘I prefer animals over people’ lifestyle. I just met enough people to realize the animals were winning.” This meme from social media pretty much sums up the past few months of my semi-rural life in southern New Mexico, not to mention it’s an ongoing theme woven throughout my Other Worldly

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” So said Benjamin Franklin. On that very subject, a social media post seen today depicted a sign that said: IF YOU DON’T HATE TRUMP AFTER THIS 18 MONTH SHIT SHOW, YOUR COMMITMENT TO STUPIDITY IS IMPRESSIVE. And then there was a cartoon

I spent a sunny and sometimes sweltering Friday morning last week doing something never done before, picking grapes for winemaking at a neighbor’s place a few blocks away. For the past year, I’d watched the vines of Cabernet Sauvignon, Mission, Merlot, and Sangiovese (the latter depicted in the accompanying photo) grow and ripen in anticipation

During this very week in late July is when the opening scene in Alienable Rights, my first Other Worldly (OW) novel, takes place. Wherein Rowan Layne walks out into bright sunshine in Reno—and paranoid gun-crazed pandemonium—over breaking news that aliens are among us, and we might be aliens ourselves. In that novel, published February 2020,