Calling Out Gun-Worshipping Fanatics for What They Are
The opening scene of Alien Sensation, fifth novel of the Other Worldly series coming later this month, involves a threat to protagonist Rowan Layne’s life by a gun-toting supposed “religious” fanatic who doesn’t like her speaking truth, or really speaking at all. Because he’s also a misogynist straight out of the Salem witch trial mentality. […]
Sidestepping the Humorless to Write What’s Funny
Now that my fifth book of the Other Worldly series, Alien Sensation, will launch this month, my mind travels back to all of the input, advice, criticisms and general commentary I’ve consumed and attempted to digest in the past four years regarding writing and the publishing process. The whole gamut can be a daunting prospect, […]
Gun Fetishists, Unmitigated Greed, and the Pathological Pursuit of Power
Three years ago in late May, just before Memorial Day, I wrote a newspaper column titled, “Patriots stand in front of a gun, not behind gun rights.” I was living in an insidiously toxic place called Lyon County in Nevada at the time, where that March all five county commissioners voted to declare it a […]
Tyrannical Timeline: A SCOTUS Backstory
In 2014, I published a nonfiction tome, Raising Questions: Daring to Denounce the Religious Right to Defend Our Civil Rights, in which I pitted the Bill of Rights of our Constitution against the Ten Commandments and tenets of the Catholic Church. The chapter on voting rights is prefaced with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: The […]
Heinous is the Hubris of Hateful Men Playing God
In the opening scene of my upcoming Alien Sensation, protagonist Rowan Layne is attacked by a misogynist reporter from Fox News in Salem, Massachusetts, followed by a pistol-packing religious zealot proclaiming her to be an abomination and a whore. After which she addresses the reporter: “When you file today’s story, do try to refrain from […]
Mother of All Wars Against Women
I recently posted about minor censorship issues occurring when I was a newspaper columnist in rural central Nevada. But I left out one instance of curious copy editing; a headline eschewed in my very last column. The media powers didn’t cotton to my observation that Supreme Court integrity was irrevocably eroded. That column was published […]
Avoiding Social Media Outcome Obsession
This time known to me as author’s limbo can be tricky. Awaiting the return of a manuscript from my editor while starting on the next story in my Other Worldly series, my head immersed in a new challenge with new secondary characters and outer space adventures. You’d think I’d be used to it, as this […]
Going Where the Writing Road Beckons
This week marks ten years in Nevada. My perspective has changed greatly since 2012, in large part due to where I resided for the first seven. I was fortunate enough to have been a local newspaper columnist for the final three years of a soul-stifling existence in Lyon County, and in many ways this blog […]
Planetary Plague: Ludicrous Lack of Self-Awareness
Today is Earth Day. I’d planned to write about it and myriad environmental issues addressed in my Other Worldly novels. But I recently attended a homeowner’s association board meeting in my over-55 community and realized what a microcosm it is of everything currently happening in greater (or not so great) society. One might even call […]
Weaker Sex? Speak For Yourself
Feminist food for thought on this Good Friday as observed by Christians: One female member of Congress is apparently neither a feminist nor the devout Christian she claims to be. There is scant that is good about what she represents, including her recent assertion that women are the weaker sex, conveniently based on a biblical […]