WELL I GOT IT.

 After two years of lucking out I finally lost the toss and came down with covid. I'm double boosted so its amounted to not much more than a bad sinus cold but its ANNOYING. I have spent a little over two weeks coughing, spitting and blowing and the thing still wont leave my system. I work from home so I only lost two days near the beginning when I had a bit of a fever and genuinely felt crap.

Part of what really bugs me about this beyond being sick is, I was slowly transitioning into doing new things with my You Tube channel. Against my better judgement and with no other options I have started recording my feather light voice reading my ultra short stories. I back this up with visuals that don't really illustrate whats happening but do suggest the action.   

Once I run out of this material (that will take a while) I will have to make the leap to actual actors. That will demand better tech than what I own however so onward with what I have. 

Years ago there was a mad rush of Armageddon end of the world movies. They ran from the sublime (Omen) to the ridiculous (a crap disaster with Swartzinegger reciting catch phrases.)  I'm a fan of the govenator but when he phones it in you know there's a bill he had to pay sitting somewhere.

All this stuff was being taken from the Bible. I looked into the Bible and found the Nephilim. Sometimes called The Watchers. I first wrote a low budget script that's gotten some interest but sadly no action then I wrote the above book. I've also used them in a different book and script. (that script is mega budget and probably will never see the light of day) 

  Check out both on my amazon web site. There are several pages so you might have to click on the numbers at the bottom to find the covers. I turned 63 in August and I've been writing for a lot of that time. There's a lot of books there.

So unless Russia decides to end the world check em out.   

LABOR DAY 2022

 I'm told its different in the USA but for anyone that has a school system that generally starts the day after Labor Day, this day marks the last day of summer holidays. In Toronto it marks the last day of the Canadian National Exhibition. Also called The CNE or THE EX.  

The Ex is a hundred plus year old fair that used to be THE place to promote products and win ribbons for your sheep or produce. It got a bit watered down through the years and some things got shunted to other events but it still has a hold on the Toronto mind-set. 

Above is a commercial from 1982. It has a jingle that has stuck in the brains of Torontonians for years. We still go. We go and complain its not worth it. We go and complain its to expensive. We go anyway. We go because that's what you do at the end of summer. We go because we've always gone. 

I think this year a lot of us went for another reason though they might not have realized it. We went because for two  years it wasn't there. There was nothing to mark the line between summer and school. Whats worse the poor old dame was losing money for a couple of years before Covid hit and there was a question as to whether it would be back. 

                                "We've always gone."

That's the thing you see. Think for a minute. How many things in your life can you apply the word "always" too? Not many I bet. The modern world kills the word "always" dead. 

People need at least some things to always be there. Change is nice but let me keep at least something. People need an ALWAYS and Toronto needs the Ex.  

Dear Diary

 It occurs to me that this is the closest I have ever in my life come to having a diary. Oh sure I had them given to me when I was a kid. They were usually pink with a fairy on the cover and a little key.  

Then when I got older people started telling me, "You should JOURNAL you really should, it makes you feel SO much better!"

I've never understood how examining how shit life can be at times and writing it down makes you feel better. That's why I write fiction. I control the reality there and can put my hero(s) into problems then get them out. For me fiction is action. Yes moping around sometimes happens but action helps fix things. 

There's even a scientific real world parallel. Dopamine is the feel good hormone. You get it when you have a chance to talk about yourself or even write about yourself (Okay maybe journaling can do something but not for me. I follow my late mothers rule, never write anything down you wouldn't want to be printed in the front page of the newspaper.) 

Conveniently, another way of getting dopamine is physical activity. You don't need much either. Last spring I bought myself a teen/adult sized kick scooter. (no motor) Its a bit small but I have no real way of knowing if the ones you see on line are any bigger so I'm running with this one. 

Its great. My knees are much better, so is my balance and I feel a buzz after every work out. Fifteen minutes at the beginning of the day can get my brain going. 

Here's a book to get your brain going. 

Well going slowly it is summer. Its a fun examination of what can happen if you write to much down and leave it for the next generation to deal with. Two 5 star reviews. 

Find it on my amazon page listed below. 

RETURN

    We're well and truly into August now and I have a few thoughts. The first one is easy. The world hasn't come to an end. Not yet at least. YA! 

    The second one is a little less obvious. The one thing about August I always remember, beside the fact that its the month with my birthday, is the fact it stops being so burn the pavement hot. This month is not following that general trend. I just spent a night almost sleeping with the fan off and not sleeping at all with the fan on. 

    It's not the first time I've had to work with maybe two hours actual sleep. Insomnia in general is an old acquaintance of mine. Most of the time it happens when I've had to much caffeine from various sources generally cola, in the winter tea. Sometimes its not being able to turn my brain off and stop thinking about stuff I can do nothing about. Its never fun no matter what the reason. 

    I prefer if I'm awake to lay quietly and run the action of a book through my head so I know what I'm doing the next time I sit down to write. Right now I'm finishing off a ghost story. The first draft will be a little less than 40 thousand words. This sounds like a lot but commercial sized novels are usually twice that size or more. Its the nature of the way I write. The first draft is almost always a lot shorter than the last. 

    I just finished publishing a book. My first dystopian novel.

     Mankind has resorted to an unnatural level of control to weed out anti social activity. The result of this control is not only tragedy but a weakening of the walls between worlds and the monsters of man's early past are starting to return. 

Find it on my amazon page, the link is below.

Also check out my You Tube page. 

mid summer

    We're a little less than two weeks away from the mid point of summer 2022. In some parts of the world its hot as the devils back door and in other parts people are trying very hard to blow each other up. 

    The Republican party in the USA is trying to set up an oligarchy and is busy convincing the very poor who grew up with to much lead in their drinking water that its a good idea.  In Canada conservatives look to the south with longing and proceed to try and smear anyone that tries to take care of the environment or the people in general.  

    Understand this is just a list I have no ability to draw any conclusions and even less ability to come up with any solutions. I think government is there to serve all the people not just the rich that give them money so they can run election campaigns. I think past historic wrongs need to be addressed not erased. I think the same for current wrongs if it comes to that. 

    Its no wonder that fantasy and horror is so big these days. What's better to distract yourself from the fact that you may never be able to afford to live without a room mate or even more than one than a nice horror novel. The guy dedicating himself to paving farmland and green space is nothing compared to a good monster under the stairs.

    Below is my recent effort in that arena. I don't do hard horror so if you are looking for a lot of blood and guts its not for you.  What we have here are three novellas under one title. Honestly I think I did this just because I loved the title. The basic theme is what's worse, the monster that is easily recognizable as a monster, or the human that is in reality a monster? Kind of like a conservative politician really. Are they really worried about the bottom line or do they just not care about the fact that way to many people are one pay check away from living in a dumpster?  

In here you will find my novellas. 

Live Stream

The House in the Wood

Hey Come Here

If you want you can get them on their own. Check out my amazon page link below. Actually the stories started out as screen plays but lockdown gave me the time to adapt them.

Check this out at

 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B6T1J4S9/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1

Planning

 How do you plan for the future? -I'll be danged if I know. I have enough problems with the present.- is probably not a good answer. 

People of substance love nothing better than talking down to people who have very little. They also love singing the song of planning. Cool. Great. Lovely. You want to fill in the gaps on that concept? How does one plan, when even if you have a full five days scheduled on a work week, you might not have even one full day, because you get sent home early, because business is slow? How do you plan if you don't know from week to week how many of those possible full days you might be scheduled to work? One? Four? Zip?

Understand, I am not hitting at businesses here. They're just trying to stay alive. Without the small and medium sized business of the world most of us wouldn't have any income at all. (Not touching on big business that's a whole other blog post) Its the preachers of toxic and increasingly unrealistic positivity I'm throwing stones at.   

Anyway planning. I have been making plans regarding the small amount of my life I have any control over. I have finished polishing three novellas. I have published them under three separate covers. Next week I will be publishing them under a single anthology title Monsters Human Monsters Inhuman. 

Here's the covers. 

They can be found on my amazon page you can download or order the paper back. If you like you can wait and get all three at once under one cover. 

Link to my page is below. . 

Fire Works

    I'm writing this on Canada day 2022. For the first time in two years there are Canada day celebrations happening today and tonight there are going to be fire works. I love fire works and luckily I live right across from a small park that is designated in this area to be a place with a public display.  In past years I have been home and making tea before the first city bus arrives to take people away. 

    Of course every time I comment on social media that I am eager to have the fire works back I get inundated with negativity. Its bad for pets, PTSD sufferers, the environment you name it. Sure they have a point but its like listening to a vegan tell you why its bad to eat cheese. 

    Then there's the indigenous community saying very loudly we shouldn't celebrate Canada at all. I'm no expert in these things but it seems to me that if you don't celebrate what you have you will never have the desire to make it better. A lot of bad has happened in the past but creating reconciliation is complicated and tends to insist on both parties allowing that ether side has a right to exist. 

    Not easy I will grant you. 

     We do still exist however and hopefully we will continue to exist. Just like fireworks. Mind you I'd be completely open to a new kind that have been invented that are pretty without the big bangs. I'd be good with that. 

    Since its Canada day lets have a mention of a Canadian story. Well its a ghost story set in Toronto. 

    Corktown is a novella set in downtown Toronto. There is a very nice stone church which originally had a grave yard behind it. Times changed and the land was needed for something else so the graves were moved elsewhere. The thing is there were at least two typhoid fever pits in this yard, relics of the diaspora caused by the potato famine.  Do you think they sifted the dirt to get every bone? 

    Nope.

    Whats on that spot now? A grade school and a school yard. If that's not a setting for a ghost story I don't know what is. Check it out and more on my amazon page link below this space. 

    Oh and a word to those who live to say negative things about stuff other people love. That balloon you are poking holes in might be something that is helping someone keep it together. Maybe think before you stab.