Sacred Sin

Free download of my first book, Sacred Sin, from Amazon, for Kindle and Kindle apps,  from June 01, through June 5, 2012.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H3EW3Q

Have a look, won't you?

Barnes and Noble said, "crazy good read".

Katherine Owen said, ". . .a great read. Evocative, intimate and sexy".

Stephanie James said it was the worst book she ever read.

Snarky Trolls

Or trolling snarks.  I don't get it.  There is one area where I kind of got into conversation with a person who self-pubs and frequents a lot of the sites I visit, and it kind of deteriorated, so I just steer clear of it now.  But some comment was up on Goodreads which is a huge, rambling, sometimes confusing, site that is supposed to be a good hangout for readers and would be authors. (For instance, in one place it says my book is down for rewrite and in another place it is up with the new cover.) Anyway, of course, after I made my TINY remark some asshole had to come back with gee, congratulations, you must be so popular to look at stuff that way.  I so bad wanted to reply right there on the site with "Fuck you asshole.  Why does this site attract so many assholes?"  Except that wouldn't be speaking well for my very own presence would it?  The thing is, the blog moderator seems like a nice guy, although if I was a professional diagnostician, which I am not,  I would say, definitely Asperger's.  Gives out way too much personal, way too personal information, and has a couple of other strange characteristics  that leave me wondering.  Not my place to judge.  But this, FineWhine, is my place to vent, and who ever you are, you know damn well what I am talking about.

I will practice self control and try even harder to stay away.  But, even at my age, (considerable) it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many people out there lurking, waiting for the chance to pounce.  Always trying to cut someone off at the ankles.  Like they don't have enough of their own ground to stand firm on?  I'm crowding their fucking stage?   Always snarky, cloaked, unnecessary.  And they cannot go to sleep at night  unless they've lobbed a particular amount of their shit at people.  I would say it is tiny dick syndrome, except sometimes it is a female.  Although, come to think of it, it usually is a guy.

What is wrong with me that I cannot learn that lesson?  Good thing God didn't make me a hanging judge.

Waiting for the Spark

Lately it seems I am selecting things that look nice on my blog.

Hold on. . .

If a truth creeps up on you, I guess it's not exactly what you would call a revelation.  But there is absolutely a moment of realization.

I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood.  My mom had two kids and a caboose. ( I once over heard a neighbor sitting in the kitchen talking to my mom and this women had seven kids and she asked my mom what she did that she only had three.  Honest to God.  In one lifetime.)  The caboose knows he was a caboose and knows that happens in Irish Catholic families and, in truth, he has not dealt with it very well.  But none of my mom's kids were ever taught anything resembling a coping skill.  My mom always had a job.  She thought that made her independent, but since she died my dad has made remarks about how that made her feel she was contributing but in fact it was a pittance and an inconvenience.  Sometimes my dad worked three jobs and my older brother and I always had a job.  I mean always. I bought my own bicycle when I was seven and from the time I was thirteen, I bought every thread I wore.  Once my mom saw this coat that she thought was great and I was luke warm about it.  She said, "Well, I'll buy it for you since you buy everything else."  I was thirteen and a freshman in high school.

Anyway, what I started out to say was, despite her holding jobs to make her feel independent, my mom was totally dependent on my dad, as was he on her, though not financially.  I grew up thinking that the husband-wife thing was a dynamic unto itself and that's the way it was.  And that belief, which no one ever bothered to tell me was misbegotten, caused me years and years of sadness.  Then I realized my marriage was not like my parents, and the things that you grow up and have engrained in you culturally and socially, do not apply in every individual case.  And I realized, not all of a sudden, but I came to know that I am in this boat all by myself and it has been very freeing.  There is this guy that lives in my house, and we get along now.  I can make demands of him, but I have no expectations of those demands being fulfilled and I have done stuff I never thought I could do, all by myself, and my boat isn't leaking and the sea is calm.  There is still sadness and difficulty in my life, but it is all mine to deal with as I choose.  I'm fine.

Bird cages

I really just wanted to see how this looked on my site.  Pretty nice, I'll say.

Sorry about the border drift. For the sake of art. It will correct next blog which may be any minute now.

WORK

I decided to get out my notes on a non-fiction book I had an idea for some years back.  Not only was I able to locate the notes, but I wrote a 2,000 word fore warning, and I kept looking up more and more stuff. It was fascinating.  This is going to be what I always called schlock psychology, but actually, maybe schlock sociology.  Actually, maybe?  And you are letting me write?

 I shouldn't start so late in the day, but a.m. has been gruesome for me the last month or so.  This was so much fun.  I am most content with the wheels spinning in my head.  Just that little worry when they spin too much. . .

When I'm not writing, I am moping. I don't care if I got the upstairs and the hallways vacuumed, and two flats planted, etc., etc., it feels like moping to me.

I have to keep that thought about how much time I have wasted out of my head and just enjoy this time.

The june bugs are starting to hit the windows, also.  Just as an aside.

Henry is on amytriptelene.  So funny.  I used to take it and he is a Cocker Spaniel.

Doldrums

I think doldrums is more a weathery type feeling, but I am in some weird place.  Like there is no wind filling the sail, but I just don't feel like turning the motor on.  I'll wait until I have to do something.

I am so interested in that new Disney movie "Brave".  The little brothers with the red curls? I can't wait to see it.  So I  put a blurb on twitter and they put it in some Disney News  Letter which was fun.  But since twitter is limited to 140 characters, I don't think it will be on the list  for  the Pulitzer nominations.

And I can think of nothing to blog about, but have had a couple of curious spikes.  I wish I knew what made them so I could duplicate it.  And I am thinking the heck with this writing, but I got two nice royalty payments last week and saw today both accounts already have a decent amount in them, so it is just like a thin little income stream that I am getting kind of used to. It even grows infinitesimally each time.


This all started with my non-fiction work that I am not going to talk about since I notice lots of things I say show up in a thinly disguised version on other sites.  So I am working on that and it  should be a whole new experience. I have lots of notes and outlines and ideas, and have actually opened a doc, so when the muse hits me, I am ready.

Today's CTA:  whatcha workin' on, huh?

YOUR TRUTH

I wish I had the right to tell people that they are wrong.

 I believe some people have the kind of mind that has a built in bull shit detector.  I believe those people are sometimes branded as being mentally "different".  Polite society now usually calls these cases "conditions" rather than illnesses.  The thing  is I have a lot of beliefs.  Some contradictory probably, but C. S. Lewis said, "You do not have a soul.  You are a soul. You have a body."  And, unfortunately, the brain comes with the body.  So it fucks up what is in your soul.  When you are aware of this you are mentally ill.

I know.  My soul has a lot of mileage on it.  And there is lots of stuff this brain just can't process.  But lots of things I come to grips with and ultimately enunciate, have been said and heard before--perhaps when this soul was in a different body, or perhaps by myself. And I am more than frequently branded a nutcase as were, perhaps, previous users of this soul.  One thing I know, and God put it in this soul when he created it, not when he put it in this body, and that is that everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but you have to indulge them and realize that is their truth whether you agree or not.  I also know that your brain can cause you to have a different take on what you once thought was your truth.

Some people, often with pretty wacky ideas of their own, come right out and say "You are wrong."  How can you know that?  Did you study for that and do you have a certificate?  Who grants those certificates?  Can I apply for one?  Could I pretend to be God if I had one?

When you say someone is wrong, you are being rude at the very least.  Truth is not a solid object, spherical and the size of a dime. It is mutable (I believe). The truth that whole villages can be wiped out by cholera is no longer true.  Oh, wait.  That's not a truth.  That's a FACT.  Don't get that shit mixed up. It pisses people off.

People who know truths, and, probably, no one can know them all,what ever they are, how many ever there may be, have a tendency to cloak the idea that they believe this "thing" in poetic language.  It takes the edge off their fear of being branded "wrong".  It's maybe not poetry; it's maybe waffling.  But Poetry sounds better, goes over easier, and people can poke around in the language and find their own truths. Symbolism is open to interpretation, so you can say what you believe and maybe not get called out for it.  I am wandering off the track here.  I should have stopped at pissing people off.  I could go on longer with this subject, but you are not listening anymore.

Today's CTA:  define truth

Gentle Reminder

I seem to have found my true calling in life.  I seem to be an expert in pissing people off.  Discuss this amongst yourselves.


 THE MAZE is free until 5/31/12.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/158247

If you feel a sense of loyalty or some sort of ill-defined fear, it is $2.99 at Amazon. Not  a deal-breaker.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0061SB3TC

I got one nice four star review so far.  She said it had the makings of a great book.  I refuse to dwell on what she meant by that.  She said she felt a little confused about who some of the characters were and where they came from, and I felt bad about that because it was a sequel.  I thought maybe I just ran everyone into the next book.  But then I remembered, I kind of covered that in the first few chapters.  The first specifically; and I also remember that people kind of don't pay close attention til they are immersed.  So immerse yourself in chapter one. It rocks anyway.

pray with me

Change in Perspective

NOT A COYOTE

I live in far Northern Illinois.  I think someone said my town is four miles from the cheese wall.  I have lived in this house a little more than twelve years.  We live on the edge of a dedicated bird sanctuary that is owned by the State and our Village.  (Not gospel, just my interpretation of what someone said.)  It has a lake at either end and a huge  multi hundred acre forest preserve at the North end.  We have coyotes that live in the field behind us.  We have blue heron, lots of hawks, last year a few sightings of Sandhill Cranes, and several reports of cougar which no one believed until he was shot dead on the North side within the actual Chicago city limits.  DNA tests proved he was the same one that was traveling through here.  His hair and blood were found in a barn just North of my village.  I have seen wolves twice.  Different ones.  Alone.  Different colors.  I see coyote all year long, every year.  I know what a coyote looks like.  Each time I saw the wolf, he stood and looked at me, (us, I was with someone else both times.)  These occasions were about six years apart, so it is obvious this is not part of a pack.  A wolf was caught on a trail camera in Union Illinois, West of me, and a wolf was hit by a car and killed just west of Antioch (next town over) on the Illinois side of the border.  He was an Eastern Grey Timber Wolf.  They are not Grey.  He was wild, not an escaped pet which was determined by the contents of his stomach and the condition of his coat.  Anyway that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Lots of people look at me like, okay, lady with rocks in your head.

I was just watching a vid on my iPhone which was of wolves chasing an elk pack out West.  It was thirty nine minutes long and I was watching, trying to watch, trying to listen to David Letterman at the same time, so I wasn't paying close attention, but when the wolf was joined by two pack mates and drew closer to the elk, I used to think, oh poor elk.  Run, run faster, baby.  But this time I was thinking yeah, you almost got him, there you guys got him. Dinner!  Yay.  If it is a little baby zebra or springbok in Africa being chased by a lion or a leopard or something, I still think, run, baby, run.  But now I am rooting for the wolves.  And when the ranchers in Wyoming ask that they be allowed to shoot a few more cuz they are taking too big a bite out of the live stock, I think, Oh, shucks. Not, certainly, leave the poor wolves alone.  But, shucks, here we go again.  Just when they are getting a nice foot hold.

Let me be the first to tell you, if I see a griz out in my meadow, I will probably place a few calls.  But I just think it is strange that I have had this sea change of loyalties or maybe just attitude  in my dotage.  Although maybe that is why.  I am getting dotty.

Today's CTA:  who are you rooting for?  Wolf or Elk?

Another Fabulous Freebie

I cannot say enough good things about Smashwords.  My book, THE MAZE,  is already in the Premium catalog.  The cover wouldn't take and I didn't like it anyway, so I did one in Powerpoint in about ten minutes and, though it is not my favorite, it is in keeping with several of the book's themes and doesn't look bad.  I wanted that little red head on there from the get go, but couldn't get her to fit.  She is a joyous me, someone I don't see too often.

A person was sorry they couldn't download cuz they had a Nook.  Anymore was in Select and will be for a few more weeks, so that is Amazon exclusive, a mixed bag, but  it will go on Smashwords too pretty soon.

Smashwords puts you in the Apple, Nook, Kobo, and all other devices format so you can even download to some off brand e reader you bought on vacation in Thailand.  I have always had my best sales from Barnes and Noble, so I hope this works out.  Hundreds have already been downloaded for free, and this book, which I love so much, I am doing the sequel, is in the cellar at Amazon.  So I hope y'all enjoy it.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/158247

THE MAZE

The Maze will be free the rest of May on Smashwords.  They are pouting about a few things, so it's not in premium, but you can use most readers.  I'll have to find the link tomorrow, I am so tired,but since you are champing at the bit, do a name search.  It walks a narrow line. It is the least read so far, but that is inexplicable since it's so much fun. 

Political joke.

I.m posting this cuz I can't figure out how else to tweet it.

AFTER THE FIZZLE OF YESTERDAY’S MAY DAY DEMONSTRATIONS, this passage from Jonah Goldberg’s new book is fitting:

Ronald Reagan . . . was confronted by a bunch of screaming hippies back in his days as governor of California. They swarmed his car yelling at him for cutting education funding or some such. One fellow — who I like to imagine looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo — held up a sign to Reagan’s car window saying “We are the future!”
Reagan quickly grabbed a pen from his suit pocket and wrote something down on piece of paper and thrust it to his side of the window so the kid could read it. It said: “I’m selling my bonds!”

I Call Bull Shit

Making over a turn of phrase that, when analysed, is in fact  contradiction at best and a mixed metaphor at the least and saying it is such good poetic language.  Fuck that.  I may write like a third grader, but I am not pretentious about it at all.  And a couple of grown ups have said I don't write like a third grader.  I think this bull shit phrase turning is not the same as telling a story.  And that is what I do.  I tell stories about people.  Things happen, but I don't tell stories about things that happen.  I tell stories about the people the things happen to.  Because that is the way life  struck me.  I am a person that things happened to,and they keep on happening. Like rain from hell.   And that is what I am made of, the way I handled the things that happened and what those things did to me.  The person. If you never before in your life saw me, and you struck up a conversation with me, you would take me at face value.  You wouldn't know how I retaliate, how I hurt, how I inflict pain, how I have handled pain.  So if I told you the things that happened to me, you would have to relate that to the person you are talking to.  And I would have to tell you a story. And  I would fucking weep.