Speed Limits and Other Laws We Don't Care About

I borrowed this from a monologue one of my characters (Elaine Frost) in Living Next Door to Heaven, Book 7, Hearthstone Entertainment delivered. It’s worth repeating.

Let’s talk about the law. The speed limit is 70.

It’s posted on a sign right beside the Interstate

But you need to read the fine print.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you are in a hurry;

Unless you are late;

Unless it’s an emergency.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you only push it a little;

Unless you are a better driver than most people;

Unless other drivers are really idiots.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you drive a sports car;

Unless you used to drive a sports car;

Unless you want to drive a sports car.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless they don’t ticket until you are ten over;

Unless it’s late at night;

Unless no one else is around.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless it’s a dumb law;

Unless it’s really just a suggestion;

Unless the DOT made a mistake.

Unless you are going downhill;

Unless there is a car right in front of you and you just don’t like following someone;

Unless you are in the FAST LANE.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you’re nearly out of gas and need to get home before you run out;

Unless you’re thinking about something else;

Unless you are angry, sad, upset, happy, celebrating, or drunk.

Unless you can afford it;

Unless you know someone who can fix it;

Unless you have a really good lawyer.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you have to pee;

Unless there’s a storm coming;

Unless your time is more important than speed limits.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless everybody goes faster;

Unless you’re just sticking with traffic;

Unless you just want to get there.

Unless you drive for a living;

Unless you don’t drive for a living;

Unless they’re not serious;

Unless your wife made you do it;

Unless your speedometer is broken;

Unless it’s not criminal and you wouldn’t break an IMPORTANT law;

Unless going faster sticks it to the man;

Unless you really just don’t care.

SPEED LIMIT 70

Unless you read the fine print.

(Your mileage may differ.)

I try to stay out of conversations about the current state of the world aside from saying whenever I can that I am anti-racist, anti-fascist, and believe Black lives matter. And if you tell me “All lives matter,” then thank you for agreeing with me. All lives don’t matter if Black lives don’t matter. I saw a post daring people to repost a meme that said ‘Police lives matter.’ I responded with a comment that said, ‘Yeah. All lives matter.’

However, I’ve been hearing a lot of noise about “if people just obeyed the law…” It’s used to justify police brutality by pointing out the person murdered was a bad person and should have obeyed the police orders. Like Breonna Taylor. Right. None of the people murdered by police… Not One!... of any color had been convicted and sentenced to death.

I just want to say that if you are among those who can’t obey the most basic of traffic laws… If you’ve decided you don’t need to follow the rules regarding wearing masks because you know someone who said it wasn’t effective or because it’s a plot of a mythical deep state… If you file residence in a state other than where you live to get cheaper taxes or license plates or voting… If you won’t get your children vaccinated… If you are willing to shoot doctors who perform abortions… If you are a vigilante deciding you can intimidate people into your way of thinking by waving a gun around or showing up with 700 buddies on loud motorcycles… If you are a police officer who won’t enforce mask laws or who believes you are justified in killing a person because you think he or she is a criminal… If you are a politician closing down polling places and opposing mail-in ballots… If you think your religion is more important than our constitution…

DON’T EVER TELL ME YOU ARE FOR LAW AND ORDER!

How can one remain silent?

I’ve felt for some time that I write human compassion and equality into every story I write and people should know how I feel about things. But how can I not say something explicit?

Me: Black Lives Matter.

Reader: All Lives Matter.

Me: I’m glad you agree with me.

Reader: What? You said…

Me: You can’t believe that all lives matter if you don’t believe black lives matter.

Reader: You’re saying the rest of us don’t....

Me: No. I’m saying the lives that are in danger right now are black. Don’t worry, cupcake. You still matter.

I read an interesting article written by a Rhode Island police trainer (Dave Bissonnette), decrying the murder of George Floyd and condemning his murderers. That’s not the way police work is done, he declared. Unfortunately, he went on to minimize things by trotting out the threadbare trope, “Not all cops.” He holds that only 1% of police are bad cops and begs us not to condemn the 99% of good cops.

There are approximately 1.2 million sworn in law enforcement officers at the Federal, State, and Local level in the United States. “Sworn in” means they can arrest people. There are at least that many civilian workers in law enforcement as well. It’s difficult to get an exact number because there is apparently no database of how many officers there are in the country. According to the Rhode Island police trainer, that means there are only 12,000 bad cops in America.

The evidence has been mounting against this position. Two police officers were arrested in Buffalo for assaulting a senior citizen and leaving him bleeding on the pavement. Fifty-four officers resigned in protest against their arrest. This tells me the two arrested were not the only bad cops. If a "Good Cop" is not arresting, denouncing, and preventing the "Bad Cops" he or she is not a good cop.

In the 1960s we marched for civil rights, we protested the Vietnam war, and people purporting to be good cops and National Guard soldiers, beat us, killed us, and did everything they could to prevent us. Having entered a 60-year time warp, we are marching and protesting again. Police are beating and killing again. But in the words of our 1960s theme song, “We shall overcome.”

Now, on to my travels, right?

In May, I moved from Pharr, Texas to Worley, ID. Google was kind enough to send me the full color depiction of my travels.

They say 2,269 miles in 39 hours. Of course, they only know the miles when I had Google Maps running. My records say 2,622 miles in ten days. I got here to Sun Meadow on May 28 and haven’t moved since. I’ll need to go to Coeur d’Alene on June 15 for supplies and meds.

What am I doing?

I’m writing. You might remember me going on and on about my new story American Royalty 1: Coming of Age when I wrote it in November as part of NaNoWriMo or when I rewrote it in February to give to editors. Now you can listen to me go on about Rise and Awaken, a Destiny’s Call novel. My February rewrite of Coming of Age was really a cleanup and cut. Rise and Awaken is a complete rewrite based on criticism from my editors.

The basic concept is still the same. An alternate universe America in which there are well-defined classes based on the character of the individual, not occupation, heredity, or wealth. In that construct, a young man comes to grips with what it means to be a Leader and is mentored by his personal assistant, an Advisor.

My editors pointed out that the classes were confusing and not well-defined. The POV was hard to follow. Characters were stereotypes or clichés. It wasn’t set apart from any other coming of age story. There was more emphasis on the relationship between the two protagonists than on the story, with too little actually happening other than their love affair. Oh yes, and the chapters were too long.

Yes, as usual, it is too long. You already knew that. :)
 The time frame is ambiguous, but not in a good way. You do have several contemporary phrases buried in there, but I didn't mark them. If you go back and try to make it more detailed and more identifiable, it would make it even longer. And that would not be a good thing. It is too slow-moving already, and the characters are just not grabbing me.

Love my editors. I took their criticism to heart and started writing the story from scratch again. The emerging result is Rise and Awaken. I’m nine chapters and 35,000 words into the rewrite and think it’s an improvement. We’ll see what the editors say this time.

I’m writing two Devon Layne books at the same time, so I’m only getting a couple of chapters of each out each week. A far different productivity path than I was on last year when I was writing a chapter a day and ended the year with 1.2 million new words written. But I’m still on track for 600k this year.

I see this view from my window every morning. Hope you are staying sane and safe during these turbulent times.

Home and Staying Here!

What a great feeling to drive down US 95 from Coeur d’Alene this week and seeing the rolling hills of the Palouse stretching out before me. There is no ‘welcome home’ sight as wonderful. I had to pull over and take pictures. It’s beautiful and green right now with a bit of snow still high on the mountains to the west.

My last night on the road, I stayed at a little campground in St. Regis, Montana called Nugget RV Resort. What a beautiful little campground. I had what was probably the most beautiful campsite I’ve had anywhere but at Sun Meadow. Nice shade, well-kept grounds, friendly but respectfully distant people. Unfortunately, that comes at a price. At nearly $50 a night (after my Good Sam discount) it was the most expensive park I stayed at during my eleven-day trip from South Texas.

There is a bit of humor in being here at Sun Meadow where everyone is naked except for their face mask!

The nights are great, with temps in the fifties which is terrific sleeping weather with the windows open. A couple of sunny hot days over the weekend, but high sixties for the next week. Huge break from the 106 I was in last week!

Writing has been progressing well while I was traveling with work on all three of my stories in progress. This isn’t the frantic-paced writing of 5-10,000 words a day I was writing at this time last year but it’s just fine as far as I’m concerned. I feel like they are good words just now.

I’m feeling very mellow as I look out my window at the scene above. With the chaos in the world outside our enclave, it is comforting to be surrounded by such peace and quiet. But in my head, I see the same turmoil, riots, police brutality, and racial tension I lived through in the sixties. In sixty years, it seems we have truly learned nothing and I despair that we ever will.

Memorial Day was Monday and I took time to remember the fallen soldiers of our many wars. I was reminded, however, that “The Greatest Generation” were teenagers and young twenties during World War II. It’s easy to think of them now as grandparents and great grandparents. But when they made their stand against Nazism, Imperial Japan, concentration death camps, and tyranny of all forms, they were young. It remains to be seen if today’s teens and young twenties will step up and make a difference--to become an even greater generation.

It’s time.

Why I’m wearing a mask

I have stayed pretty isolated for the past two months, having human contact a total of four times. So, Tuesday, I set out to move from Pharr, Texas to Sun Meadow in Idaho for the summer. I’m anxious to get “home.”

I got as far as Del Rio, TX on Tuesday night, nearly 350 miles. I put on my mask and went in to register at the Hidden Valley RV Park. Nice place. When I walked in, the park host said, “Oh, you don’t need to wear that here. We don’t wear them.” I declined the offer. During my tour and assignment of a lovely parking spot, surrounded by privacy fence so that if I’d chosen, I could have gone naked—which is about the only way I’d be comfortable in the 106 degree heat—she went on to say they had no active cases in the area and were open for business.

The next day, after a 450-mile drive, I arrived at the Western Sky’s RV Park in Vado, New Mexico (just outside Las Cruces). Large illuminated signs at the border announced that masks are required in New Mexico. I put mine on to go register and neither the host nor the previous guest were wearing a mask. I kept mine on and was pleased that even though the park is not as fancy as the night before, the temperature was 20 degrees cooler.

In Santa Fe, the Los Pinos RV Park didn’t have an office open at all. A guy came around to the site to collect the money and give me a receipt. No mask. I did.

By contrast, the KOA Kampground in Colorado City/Pueblo South to care of the entire transaction over the phone. When I pulled into the campground, I went to a walk-up window where a masked attendant had me sign the receipt for the credit card transaction and pointed in the direction of my site. Guy on a four-wheeler led me there, held up his hands when I was in the right position, and left.

Now, I’m in Wheatland, WY at the Mountain View RV Park. Yes, there is a mountain view, if you put yourself in the right place. The unmasked host stepped out of her trailer to greet me from several feet away. Pointed to the slot I was assigned and told me to fill in a registration card in the laundry room. The registration was quick and easy and I shoved the money in an envelope to put in the slot. Wrote my own receipt.

So, hey! Even when there’s a rule about wearing a mask, it’s ‘open to interpretation’; why am I bothering?

Last fall, I nearly suffered from heart failure. It almost prevented me from seeing my 70^th birthday. Four days after my birthday, I was in the emergency room and slated for cardioversion and then ablation. I survived. I took off for warmer weather on November 15, not anticipating I’d be stuck in Texas for four months! But reading the available data, I’m in an at-risk group. (That’s the group that various people have referred to as “Some of them are going to have to die to save the economy.”) Having had one brush with death, I’m not looking forward to another.

What I’ve discovered is that I cannot depend on other people to protect me. I expect that includes not just those in the places I visit, but also people who vouch their friendship. Of 1,675,000 confirmed cases in the US, 98,000 have died. Over 10,000 new cases are reported each day in the US, and no state has shown a sustained drop in the number of new cases per day reported over the past three weeks. It is up to me to protect myself.

But there is another reason, as well.

A good friend of mine, retired from the US Army, was called back to active duty to work for the CoVid response team, as Battle Captain in the Emergency Resource Center for the Army. Another friend is consulting with the DoD on CoVid modeling. Neither of them have to be doing what they are doing. Both were retired and beyond an age where they had to respond to the crisis. But they are.

I have friends in the medical field, doctors, nurses, technicians, who have all held the line in the fight against CoVid-19. They are constantly at risk, overworked, and exhausted.

And I will damn well not do anything that might make their job more difficult.

That is why I wear a mask.

Hear me out on this...

I’ve been thinking about this for the sadder part of the past four years. It’s a time in which I’ve seen the dehumanizing of many of our people. A time when corporate profits took the top priority over everything else. A time when our national debt has soared rather than the promised decline. A time when minimum wage jobs have been created that no one could live on, even though they were snapped up in the name of reducing unemployment. A time when disease has crippled the economy, created the highest unemployment in ages, and saw the sharpest decline in the stock market since the great depression.

But none of that is what I’ve been thinking about as I swelter in place in Texas. I’ve been thinking about the campaign to put a non-politician—a businessman—in the top leadership spot in the country. And that is the flaw that has been eating at me ever since.

I understand debt seemed to be out of control. It still is. I understand how scary the word ‘socialism’ is to capitalists who drive on paved highways created through socialism; depend on police and fire first responders paid through socialism; depend on businesses being propped up by socialist government funding; and collect socialist security checks each month.

But fundamentally, the United States of America is not a business. The government was not created to make a profit for the largest shareholders.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

No. There is nothing in there that says ‘make a profit.’ In fact, quite the opposite. Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, Liberty. A very specific charter for our government, and one that has been eroded steadily for over two hundred years. Justice has gone to the highest bidder, tainted by racism, sexism, and wealthism. Never has there been a time when the people were less at peace in their lives, jobs, entertainment, and education. Our defense forces are routinely sent out to defend fiscal investments, not the people or their freedom; and after serving faithfully are cut loose without fundamental services and even deported. The general welfare of the populace stands a distant last place in the eyes of law and commerce. And our liberty has been supplanted by irresponsibility.

If we were to use the metaphor of the government as a business, we would have to say there has been a hostile takeover. It is being stripped to the bone and the dismantled parts sold to the highest bidder. The government has turned from its charter to see to the general welfare by tossing the name ‘socialism’ at it. Instead, it operates on the basis of getting the best return for its largest investors. This has artificially inflated market prices to the point where only the richest investors can afford the common necessities of food, shelter, and clothing.

The mean (average) household income in the United States has moved steadily upward with the GNP. However, the median household income (half of households below and half above) has fallen further and further behind the mean. This is the result of favorable treatment of the wealthy with lower tax rates, government subsidies, and deregulation. At the same time, households at or near the median are typically dual income households who still can’t earn an ‘average’ wage.

It has taken us 232 years to get to this point; we won’t reverse it all at once. If we have been taught anything by the Covid-19 experience, it is that the essential workers in this country do not sit behind large oak desks investing in stocks. Corporate executives do not earn their income; the lowest level worker in the company earns the executive’s income. The executive just collects it.

The Supreme Court ruled that corporations were protected under the First Amendment and could participate in (fund) election campaigns. This places corporations ahead of humans in the final degree. It has established the corporation as the principal stockholder in our government.

There are three things concerning our government that I have come firmly to believe in my 70 years. 1. The United States is not a business. 2. Corporations are not people/citizens. 3. Land doesn’t vote. People do.

These three items should be at the seat of reform in the next year or we will continue to flounder and oppression will become even more rampant.

The preceding was an unpaid rant by a citizen whose income falls well below the median but above poverty. I am not a corporation.

Mothers’ Day and My Travels

First of all, happy Mothers’ Day. A mere twenty-seven years and change ago, a tiny baby entered the world and changed our lives forever. And I am so proud of the young woman she has become. So here is to Quinne and her mother, Michele—both of whom made me a father.

Who travels?

I made a bit of a joke a while back that my truck was currently getting six weeks per gallon of gas. That’s now up to almost two months per gallon. I did have to chuckle a little, though, when I received my travel report from Google Maps yesterday. Here’s what the message said:

Nathan, here's your new Timeline update

You're receiving this monthly email because you turned on Location History, a Google Account–level setting that saves where you go in your private Timeline.

Location History data also helps give you personalized information on Google, including better restaurant recommendations, and suggestions for a faster commute. You can view, edit, and delete this data anytime in Timeline.

I know that having elected this setting, I am being tracked and plotted every time I turn on Google Maps. However, don’t assume that if you turn this setting off, Google will stop tracking and plotting your journeys. The setting merely allows you to save and see that information.

I enjoy seeing this stuff and since Google is tracking it anyway, I might as well make use of it. Here’s what my travel map looked like at the end of 2019.

Pretty impressive, huh? This told me that I had traveled 11,244 miles in 2019 and that was equivalent to 50% around the world. I started the year in the lower left corner of the map, went north to the scrum in Washington and Idaho, went south through California, and then east. The last pin on the right is where I spent the holidays with Amy near Claremore, OK. All told, a very satisfying journey.

Here’s the map they sent me for April:

 

Yes, I traveled a whopping total of 4 miles and visited Costco and H-E-B plus! (grocery store).

Now the Plan

I hope to leave Pharr TX in just over a week. I’ll leave here on Tuesday the 19^th and take a more direct, Interstate-guided route north to Sun Meadow in Idaho. I’ve plotted the trip on a map.

It’s supposedly 2,547 miles. I’m not estimating anything better than being at Sun Meadow before the end of May, around the 28^th or so. I will be happy to get there and reluctant to leave again in the fall.

Well, that’s the plan, anyway. And as we know, no plan survives contact with the enemy. My daughter sent me a couple of new masks and I will wear them like a desperado! Along with the new Stetson she sent me.

I only wish I had a 45 so I could shoot me some of them virus things. We’ll teach ’em!

Stay safe. Stay isolated. Stay sane.

Zombie Flies

We all thought it would be a zombie apocalypse and there’s been some disappointment that the apocalypse we got is short on imagination. Well, I’m telling you that the zombie apocalypse has also begun.

Let me first tell you I’ve been invaded. The creatures we all blame for spreading filth and disease has found a way into my trailer, even with all the doors and windows sealed shut and the air conditioner running. The flies are thick as presidential tweets.

My flyswatter is in sad condition.

It is battle-worn and weary. It has nearly a thousand confirmed kills. The bodies are thick on the floor of my trailer.

But still they keep coming. I suspect the dead ones are coming back as zombies!

For evidence, I hit a fly squarely and watched it drop to join its brethren on the floor. Then, an hour later, a fly crawled onto my desk. I don’t know how it got there, but it didn’t fly. And in the distracted, stiff, lurching manner of a zombie, it approached me. I screamed, “I killed you once! Why don’t you just die?” And then I smashed its head with the flyswatter again because we all know you have to smash their heads in order to kill the zombies.

No. I don’t miss people contact at all! Quarantine is fine! No change for me, really.

I started putting away my latest shipment of cigars and needed to use a couple of cylindrical humidors I hadn’t touched since last summer. Imagine my surprise to find they all had cigars in them. Not full, mind you, but there were three humidors with cigars in them that I’d completely forgotten. Probably enough cigars now to last until fall since I don’t feel like sitting outside to smoke in this weather.

The weather in Idaho is looking better to me every day and I’m hoping to be there by Memorial Day.

I’ve paid for a place here in Pharr TX until May 23, but if it looks clear for travel, I’ll be heading north by the 16^th. I plan to cover the distance with minimal stops and use of the dreaded Interstate. I’ll shoot up 25 all the way to 90 and then down to Sun Meadow from Coeur d’Alene. I can’t wait to get home! But I will continue to self-isolate.

My books will soon be available on Bookapy.com. Both mainstream and erotica. The publishing site I use to release free books insists that if I promote there, I have to only promote their purchase site. With well over 30 books in the market now, it will take me a while to get the books released. That doesn’t mean I’ll be dropping Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but I’ll have yet another site to manage releases on.

The quickest way to avoid the confusion is to join me on Patreon at www.patreon.com/nathaneverett. My patrons of $5/month or more receive advance release copies of all my new books from either Devon Layne or Nathan Everett and have access to even more for free online reading.

I hope you’ll join me there!

Sweltering in Place

Back in the late 80s or maybe early 90s, there was a huge snowstorm in Seattle that totally closed everything up. People abandoned their cars in the middle of the 520 bridge and walked to safety. Temperatures plummeted and the snow and cold stayed for several days. Nor was the Pacific Northwest the only place hit. In Alaska, temperatures dipped to -90F. People took the batteries out of their cars at night into the warmth of their homes so the batteries wouldn’t die. Cars left on the pavement overnight and then started and driven away would leave the tread of their tires stuck to the pavement. It was cold and miserable.

I had a job. I needed to be in Seattle to teach my seminars on desktop publishing and had four students flying in from Alaska, as well as those from Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington. Once we were safely at the conference center and enjoying relaxing in a hot tub, my students and I chatted about life. One asked a student from Alaska what it was like at ninety below zero.

“It’s just like sixty below, but faster.”

As I look at temperatures here in Pharr, Texas this week I ask myself what’s it like to be at 105 above and 97% humidity? The answer is, “Just like ninety degrees, but faster.”

I sit inside writing and editing so I don’t die of heat prostration. Or, as Michele reminded me of her mother’s words: “We’ll die of heat prostitution.”

I intended to decamp and head north on the 23^rd of April, but I’ve extended my rent on this site through May 23 now. I see very few people, even at a distance. I manage to limit grocery shopping to once every two weeks with pharmacy once a month. I’m hoping I can get to Idaho by Memorial Day or thereabouts. Except I guess Memorial Day this year is a week early, so I’d better just say by the end of the month.

I’ve made some observations in the past month. Yes, of course I’ll share.

1.    Not washing my dishes wasn’t because I didn’t have time.
2.    The expiration date on food items seems a lot more flexible. Expires April 15? Well, it’s still April.
3.    I only need four sheets of toilet paper.
4.    I’m not retaining water. I’m retaining food.

5.    It’s not a nudist park, but if you don’t go outside, you still don’t need clothes.
6.    It’s as easy to pick up a bunch of stuff you don’t need when you shop Camping World online as it is when you go through their store.
7.    If you keep a grocery cart between you and the next person in line, that’s six feet.
8.    You can’t drink coffee through a surgical mask.
9.    It doesn’t do any good to wear nitrile gloves if you keep scratching your nose and rubbing your eyes while you’re wearing them.
10. There are people who actually believe we could whip this thing by drinking Clorox or injecting Lysol.
11. It doesn’t take an asteroid strike for the earth to start purging itself.

So, what have I been doing with all my time in isolation?

Not nearly what I intended to do. The projects I’m working on writing are not advancing at the pace I expected them to. It’s taking even longer for me to edit a boring client project than I anticipated. It’s taking even longer for my editor to edit my project. For the same reason.

What I’m making progress on is getting more of my backlist of books re-edited and put online for free reading. Last week, I started posting Steven George & The Dragon at http://nathaneverett.com/releases/stngeorge/

That means that all ten of my published Nathan Everett books are now available for free online reading! Check out the list at http://nathaneverett.com/releases/

I expect I will put more of my Nathan Everett stories online for free reading—stories that to date have not been published at all. That will probably include my newest, American Royalty: Coming of Age, which my editor and I are beginning to agree just doesn’t have the snap of my previous books. I also expect to go back in time a bit and do a refreshed version of Willow Mills, which I wrote and posted back in 2004. I have a few other unpublished stories that will never make it to Amazon, but are still fun to read. There’s even a sequel to Steven George & The Dragon titled Steven George & The Terror. It’s been buried for way too long.

Of course, that’s not all.

I now have twenty-two of my published Devon Layne books (erotic romance and adventure) available for free online reading at http://devonlayne.com/releases/index.html. This includes a new release of my first big hit in this market, The Model Student series.

This is an emotional coming of age story featuring a depressed artist at art school and the incredible changes that come in his life as he faces each new challenge.

“Dean, I’m not going to brag about what I’ve accomplished here and the opportunities that I’ve been given. I’ve been successful. But I’ve got to tell you all that I still get caught up in depression. I still question every decision I make. I’m still scared stiff that I’ll say the wrong thing or that my art won’t be good enough. Every day, Dean Peterson… every day, fellow students… every day, the toughest thing I do is come back.”

You can see the six-book set of Model Student at http://devonlayne.com/ms.html

More of my Devon Layne stories will be put up for free reading as well. You can see the full list at http://devonlayne.com/releases/index.html. 

It sounds like I’m doing a lot!

It does sound like I’m accomplishing great things while in isolation. I’m reminded of a former boss and good friend, Michael Orr, who evaluated a project I was proposing. It was quite elaborate and would require a huge amount of research while I developed a ‘style prediction’ algorithm that would be able to predict trends in printing and publishing a year in advance.

He looked at my proposal and said, “It looks like work.” His comment, when explained, was that it would look like I was really doing a lot but that there wasn’t really a value to what I was proposing. I feel, at times, that is what I’m doing at the moment. A big project that looks like work, but when it comes down to it, I’m disguising the fact that I’m not really accomplishing anything new or significant. I’m not pleased with the result of the American Royalty story. I am ten chapters deep in two different Devon Layne stories that are stalled. I have a backlog of story ideas that I could be writing. And, instead, I’m putting my backlist online for free reading and convincing myself that I’m doing my part to help people cope with their isolation by providing entertaining reading at no charge.

Here’s hoping that is actually an accomplishment.

Be well, my friends!