Would We Treat Actual Aliens the Abysmal Way We Regard Immigrants Deemed Illegal?
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 […]
Almost Time to Claw My Way Up the Traditional Publishing Tree
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 […]
Roswell, New Mexico TV Show Pulls No Political Punches
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 […]
Selfish Humans Can’t Seem to Comprehend: It’s Their Habitat Too
“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 […]
Willful Stupidity Is Watching Fox News 24/7
“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 […]
Days of Wine Grapes and Writing Gaps
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 […]
Authoring or Attorneying? No Contest
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, […]
Roswell: One of Myriad Local Crashes in July 1947
It’s July, and in southern New Mexico that means two things. Monsoon season, as in lots of thunder and lightning that doesn’t always include rain, which is actually related to the second thing, folks revisiting the Roswell Crash of 1947. Every year in proximity to the Fourth of July, the town of Roswell (113 miles […]
Anyone Else Detest the Dreaded Comparable Titles Request?
Yesterday I got a wild writing hair and polished off chapter 53 with Rowan Layne once again visiting Loch Ness in my eighth Other Worldly novel, Alien Origins. It turned out be a tad humorous, which makes me feel pretty good about my ability to maintain somewhat of a sense of humor in the insane […]
Celebrating Young Friendship Amidst an Old Experiment
This post is about maintaining hope and positivity in an 250-year-old experiment known as the United States of America, and it is dedicated to a fairly new friend, though it feels as if I’ve known her for decades. Eileen and I met one year ago later this month at a local Otero County function for […]