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. 

UBI

    Universal Basic Income: this is the idea that if you give people a basic amount of money, enough to pay rent and eat, that will give them the freedom to actually live. In Canada I think the proposed amount is two thousand a month. For the record that's more than what I make working close to full time. 

    A lot of people have posted on Facebook threads talking about UBI that amount to "I work why shouldn't they?" The problem is, We Do Work; but the hours we're given don't cover the necessities never mind any extras like say a decent winter coat or boots that don't leak after you've worn them for a month. 

    Those people might be two or three pay checks away from the street well I have news for them we're closer. Some people I know have student loans that they will be paying for out their government pensions because the jobs they have don't pay enough to pay those loans off. Forget about buying a home getting married or having kids. 

    I only mention government pensions because most work places don't have pension plans anymore. They haven't had them since conservative governments of the western world sold people the thought that unions were taking money and giving back nothing. I'm old I remember when they were doing it. 

    They blamed the unions for companies sending jobs to other countries when it was the owners of those companies that got angry that they had to take care of their workers instead of chewing them up and spitting them out like the good old days. Ah the Victorian Era when you could send a nine year old into a coal mine without some bleeding heart getting in the way. 

    I also have a penny to drop regarding those people fighting UBI who are angry that someone has thought up a way for people to not struggle like they've always done. If you really are that close to the edge depending on the rules they come up with you might be eligible too. Worried that you are going to be the ones to pay for it? If you are worried you probably don't make enough to be worried. 

    Stop being vindictive and really look at what is being proposed. This thing is even good for the people who will be paying. 

    Automation is not going away and if you discount the above mentioned jobs sent overseas scenario, its the real reason so many of those good paying jobs we miss have gone. UBI steps in and props up the jobs that are left. 

    There's also a comment to add about the economy as a whole. Stores empty? Groceries not selling? Restaurants laying off workers because of low business? Fun places closing because of low turn out? The rich don't keep those things running. There aren't enough rich to do that. It's the rest of us that make the economy work. 

    If we don't have the money we stick to survival mode and we don't go out, we buy only what we have to and the economy suffers. Survival mode is what turned the 1929 recession into a long term (great) depression that only the spending going to war could cure. UBI adds to the small jobs that far to many of us have and lets us take part and that keeps the country moving. 

    Don't really have a book that goes with this subject so lets just remind you about my book of short stories.

This is a collection of hyper short works that would fit perfectly on any cell phone kindle app. Don't pay attention to the people around you. Read something. 

Ongoing

 These days everything is ongoing. Nothing happens fast then stops. The ongoing war in Ukraine creates an ongoing energy crisis, food crisis, stock market crisis and who knows how many dominoes will fall before the game is over. 

Then there is the ongoing gun problem in the land of the free and the home of the well armed. I have from time to time watched a show that shadows real life boarder agents as they process people coming into Canada. Its kind of sad sometimes. Its also very funny when you get an American who has their AK 47 plus ammunition taken off them because if you come north to hunt moose you shouldn't be armed like an extra from an 80s action movie.  They get such a blank look on their faces when they learn, you can't do that here.  

Things have always been ONGOING of course its just that we have never been so completely informed of these ongoing things. We used to get a break but from the beginning of 24 hour news hour brains have been pounded with information both tragic and pointless. 

Lets create our own break and read something. 

I have written and self published two series with female heroes. The clip has the titles and covers. Birth of the Goddess; which incidentally is my first and most rewritten before being published book. Is the first book in a series of four. The story arch begins with the creation of my hero and ends with everyone involved having their mental feet on the ground. Adventure has happened, love has happened, and goodness knows what the future will bring. I'm open to doing more but no ideas have presented themselves.

Time Walker my other series did insist on a fifth book being written. Scenes kept showing up in my mind saying WRITE ME I'M EPIC. So I did. 

I could say a lot more but I'll just point you toward my amazon page. If you like heroes that don't wear capes and don't fit into the Marvel or DC unaverse give them a try.

My page is at           amazon.com/author/tabithabaumander     or you can click the link down at the bottom of the page