Category: AI

I Almost Voted “Yes” Without Asking One Simple Question

Do you ever feel like when you vote you are voting for which thief picks your pocket?

Like I always do, I checked my ballot before heading to the polls today. Tucked in among the usual items was a measure to fund our volunteer fire department with a property tax of 10 cents per $100 of assessed value. On paper, it sounds like a no-brainer. Who doesn’t want to support firefighters? But when I ran the numbers, I realized it could cost homeowners anywhere from a few hundred to several hundred dollars a year.

Then I noticed something else: that fire department sits about half a mile from a planned data center.

Suddenly, I had to ask: who really benefits? A fully funded fire department with brand-new equipment could mean lower insurance premiums for a massive data center next door. Call me skeptical, but I can’t shake the feeling that taxpayers may be footing the bill for someone else’s savings.

And here’s the part that really bothers me: I haven’t seen a word about it in the newspaper. No statements from politicians, no commentary from judges, no public discussion at all. I only found it by accident.

On the surface, it looks like a good idea. But sometimes you have to put two and two together, and when I did, the answer was hard to ignore.

What Do Texas Citizens Get from Data Center Expansion? An Honest Assessment

While data centers bring some economic benefits—like jobs and local tax revenue—most direct financial gains (such as tax breaks) go to the companies, not residents. Texans often face increased utility bills, environmental impacts, and infrastructure strain, with limited direct compensation or tax relief.

Texas citizens receive limited direct compensation for the negative impacts of data center expansion. While data centers can create jobs and contribute to local tax bases, the most substantial financial benefits—such as tax abatements and incentives—primarily go to the data center operators, not to individual residents. Texans may experience increased traffic, higher utility bills, and environmental impacts, with few mechanisms in place to offset these burdens for everyday citizens. Any potential tax relief or community benefits are indirect, and often do not fully compensate for the costs and disruptions borne by local communities.

Detailed Analysis

1. Tax Incentives: Who Really Benefits?

Program	Who Benefits?	Description
Chapter 313 (now expired, replaced by 2023’s CHIPS Act incentives)	Data center companies	Large property tax breaks for building in Texas; savings go to corporations
Local tax abatements	Data center companies	Cities/counties may reduce or waive property taxes for new data center projects
Sales tax exemptions	Data center companies	Exemptions on equipment purchases for data centers

Key Point:
Tax incentives are designed to attract investment, but the direct financial benefit goes to the companies, not to residents.

2. Local Community Benefits

🏢 Jobs

Short-term: Construction jobs during building phase.
Long-term: Limited permanent jobs (data centers are highly automated; typically dozens, not hundreds, of ongoing positions).

🏫 School Funding

Data centers may pay some local school taxes, but often at a reduced rate due to abatements.
Some agreements include “payments in lieu of taxes” to school districts, but these are negotiated and may not fully offset lost revenue.

🏗️ Infrastructure

Occasionally, companies fund road improvements or utilities upgrades, but these are often tied to their own needs, not broader community benefit.

3. Electricity and Water Impacts

⚡ Electricity

Data centers are massive power users, increasing demand on the ERCOT grid.
This can contribute to higher wholesale electricity prices, which may be passed on to residential customers.
In extreme cases, increased demand can strain grid reliability, raising the risk of outages.

💧 Water

Data centers use large amounts of water for cooling, potentially stressing local supplies.
Water costs may rise for all users if supply is limited.

🌎 Environmental Concerns

Noise & Light Pollution: 24/7 operations can disrupt nearby neighborhoods.
Air & Water Pollution: Indirect impacts from increased energy generation and water use.

4. Mitigation and Compensation

Environmental Mitigation: Some projects include landscaping, noise barriers, or water recycling, but these are not always required or sufficient.
Community Funds: Rarely, companies may contribute to local community funds, but these are typically small compared to the scale of impacts.
No Direct Rebates: There are no standard programs providing direct rebates or bill credits to residents affected by data center operations.

Visual Summary

Benefit/Impact	Who Receives/Experiences It?	Magnitude
Tax breaks	Data center companies	High
Construction jobs	Local workers	Moderate (short-term)
Permanent jobs	Local residents	Low
School funding	School districts	Moderate (varies)
Higher utility bills	Residents/businesses	Possible/likely
Environmental impacts	Local communities	Moderate to high
Direct compensation	Residents	Minimal/none

Honest Assessment: The Citizen-Side Balance Sheet

Most direct financial and tax benefits of data center expansion in Texas accrue to the companies, not to ordinary Texans. Residents may see some indirect benefits (like jobs or school funding), but these are often outweighed by increased utility costs, environmental impacts, and infrastructure strain. There are currently few mechanisms to directly compensate citizens for these burdens.

So the real question is, why haven’t our elected officials watched out for “ordinary Texans”?

ODDS ARE GOOD

A Review by Someone Who Read It Instead of Doing Anything Useful

Well, actually I wrote it and then read it and then told you about it.

Patty Swenson has spent seven years waiting for her real life to start. Seven years. You know what else takes seven years? Medical school. Patty, honey, this is it. Nobody’s coming with the good version.

We meet her on her thirty-fourth birthday eating Cheerios out of a coffee mug, because at some point in this woman’s life, a bowl stopped being an option. Not unavailable. Just no longer on the menu, like joy, or a two-week vacation. Her husband is “a charming man who never grew up,” which is the gentlest possible way of saying he is living proof that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. And the price, I regret to inform you, has gone up considerably. It used to be a Hot Wheels. Now it’s a virtual bass boat with a name.

Enter Ethan Brandvold. Site director. First in, last out. “A company man to the bone,” which is a hell of a thing to put on a tombstone. Here lies Ethan. Great at logistics. He can’t date her, so he leaves a chai on her desk every morning before anyone shows up. Not a note. A beverage. The man is conducting an entire courtship through hot liquids, like a Victorian ghost with a Starbucks app.

Meanwhile Birch Harbor is tearing itself in half over the data center. On one side: jobs and a new roof for the school. On the other: the groundwater, a hum in the night, and fewer stars every year. Fewer stars every year. That’s the whole century right there. We traded the sky for faster downloads and nobody called a meeting.

Then Patty’s numbers come in and the campus is drinking way more water than the nice men in windbreakers promised. Shocking. Who could have guessed a corporation would round down? Next you’ll tell me the PowerPoint rendering had more trees than the actual site.

Now she has to choose between her job and the truth, her sister and her employer, the life she settled for and the one she’s scared to want. That’s a lot of choosing for a woman who twelve pages ago couldn’t find a bowl.
Ethan’s got a choice too. It’s been in a drawer since September. A drawer, buddy. That’s not a cellar. Nothing in there is aging into anything.

Here’s my problem: I came in ready to be a jerk, and the book got me. One kiss. ONE. In a world where everything arrives in two days and in bulk, this author made me wait, and I liked it, which is embarrassing. No cheating. Happy ending. A town full of people you’d actually want coffee with, unlike the people you currently have coffee with.

There are also recipes. Lefse. Tater tot hotdish. So after you finish crying about the stars, you can build a casserole out of frozen potato objects and feel something close to peace.

Plus a book club guide, which is thoughtful, since book club is just wine with homework.
Odds are good. Read it. Then go outside and count what’s left up there.

So Why a Romance Novel About Data Centers?

Look, I’ll be honest with you. Writing about data centers and the quiet havoc they can wreak on rural communities sounded, on paper, like the least sexy thing a person could do. Groundwater tables. Megawatt load. Tax abatement schedules. Try whispering “effective cooling tower evaporation rate” into someone’s ear and see where that gets you.

But then I looked at it again and realized the thing practically builds itself into a romance. You’ve got a grumpy company man who hasn’t smiled since the Bush administration. You’ve got a sunshine heroine who still believes people will do the right thing if you just show them the spreadsheet. The grumpy sunshine dynamic works precisely because the friction is built in and the payoff lands harder once the grump finally cracks and shows his marshmallow center

. You’ve got forbidden, because he signs her performance reviews and HR has opinions. You’ve got a small town picking sides in the parking lot of the Loon Cafe. You’ve got a secret in a drawer and a number in a report that nobody wants published.
Honestly? It checks every single box. Grumpy sunshine plus forbidden love is an entire recognized category of its own at this point, and I simply backed a 300 megawatt campus into the middle of it and let everyone fight.

Your Part in All This

Grab Odds Are Good here and find out what’s in the drawer.

That’s the whole ask. One click. Less effort than finding a bowl.

And if you liked this review, do the thing. Like it. Share it. Send it to the one friend who reads four books a week and the other friend who keeps saying they’re “getting back into reading” and never does. Leave a review if you finish it, because reviews are the only currency indie authors actually get paid in, and I cannot make rent on good vibes.
Thanks for reading, thanks for sharing, thanks for clicking. You know the drill.
Now go count the stars while we still have a quorum.

Building Souls for Starships: A Field Guide to Sci-Fi Character Creation

I’ve been going back through my old work — editing it, republishing it, which in the industry we call recycling and in every other industry we call fraud.And while I’m in there scraping the barnacles off my own prose, I notice something. Character development. It grabbed me by the collar.So now I’ve got a decision to make. Do I sit on this revelation like a dragon on a pile of gold? Or do I hand it over — free, no charge, no upsell — to the small, strange congregation that actually subscribed to these e-mails?You people. The ones who gave a stranger your address voluntarily. The ones who, maybe twice a year, show up out of the void to say “hello” and then vanish again like you’re in witness protection.Yeah. I’m telling you. You earned it just by sticking around.

Grab your favorite beverage and settle in. Today we’re talking about the beating heart of every great science fiction story: the characters. You can have the most dazzling wormhole physics since Interstellar, but if your protagonist is about as deep as a puddle on a space station floor, readers will bail faster than a crew abandoning a breached hull.I’ve spent years writing across genres—sci-fi, psychological thrillers, even a little book collecting the world’s finest examples of Stupid Shit—and I can tell you this: character is king. The spaceships are just expensive furniture.

Start With the Human, Not the Hardware

Here’s a trap I see constantly: writers fall in love with their world first. They spend six months designing the economy of a gas giant’s floating cities, then slap a cardboard cutout named “Captain Blaze Starlance” into the middle of it.Flip the order. Ask yourself:

What does this person want? (Not the plot—them, personally.)
What do they fear?
What lie do they believe about themselves?

That last one is pure gold, and it’s where my psychology studies have paid off more than any writing manual ever did. Characters driven by self-deception are magnetic. A navigator who believes she doesn’t deserve her post. An engineer who’s convinced the AI loves him back. The lie creates tension; the story tests the lie.

Psychology Is Your Secret Weapon

You don’t need a degree to do this well (though I’m earning one, and it’s shamelessly useful), but you do need empathy and observation. A few tricks:

Give them a wound, not just a skill. Anyone can be “the best pilot in the fleet.” Far more interesting: the best pilot in the fleet who freezes whenever someone screams over comms—because of what happened on Titan.
Let their coping mechanisms show. People under stress joke, withdraw, control, or compulsively fix things. Your characters should too. A character who deflects everything with humor is a joy to write—I blame my lifelong love of George Carlin for that particular habit. Carlin understood that comedy and rage are roommates. Give your comic-relief character reasons to be funny. Dark ones.
Contradiction is realism. Real people are walking contradictions. The pacifist medic who’s terrifyingly good with a scalpel. The hardened soldier who can’t kill a spider. As an old Air Force hand, I can confirm: the toughest people I served with were often the gentlest off-duty, and vice versa.

Ground the Future in the Past

Here’s something my history and literature studies taught me: people don’t change as much as technology does. A sailor on a 17th-century man-o’-war and a crewman on a generation ship both know what it means to be trapped in a metal hull with the same 200 people for years, thousands of miles from home.When you build a character for the far future, anchor them to recognizable human patterns:

Hierarchy and its discontents
Faith, superstition, and how they mutate in isolation
Love and jealousy in confined spaces
The old guard versus the new generation

Your starship captain can be Horatio Nelson with a neural implant. Your colony squabbles can echo the Dust Bowl. History is free characterization research. Use it shamelessly.

The Physics of Personality

Now, because I’m the kind of person who reads electronics manuals for fun and keeps a ham radio rig humming in the garage, let me say this: let your characters interact believably with your technology.If your story has FTL travel, artificial gravity, or mind-uploading, don’t just treat tech as magic wallpaper. Ask:

Who maintains it, and what does that daily grind look like?
Who’s terrified of it? Who’s obsessed with it?
What does it cost—not in credits, but in human terms?

An old radio operator character who taps out messages in Morse because she doesn’t trust the quantum comm array? That’s a character with texture, history, and a worldview. Technology reveals character when characters have relationships with it.

Dialogue: The Carlin Test

Read your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like two exposition-dispensers exchanging schematics, revise. Great dialogue does at least one of these things:

Reveals character (what they say vs. what they mean)
Creates friction (people rarely want the same thing in the same moment)
Sounds like a person, not a manual

In comedy, Carlin’s genius was precision—he knew exactly which word hit hardest. Sci-fi dialogue often drowns in invented jargon. My rule: use one invented term where you’re tempted to use five, and make sure the emotional current underneath the words is always flowing. People arguing about reactor settings are usually really arguing about trust.

The Grandkid Test (Yes, Really)

Here’s a litmus test I use, inspired by the toughest critic I know with the highest standards—someone young enough to see right through nonsense: would a smart kid find this character boring?

Kids forgive complexity but never forgive dullness. They don’t need simplified characters; they need honest ones. Write people who want things badly, who fail, who surprise you. If your grandmother and your granddaughter would both find your protagonist interesting, you’ve done something right.

A Quick Checklist Before You Launch

Before your character boards the ship, make sure you can answer:

What do they want? (External goal)
What do they need? (Internal truth they must learn—or refuse to)
What’s their lie? (The self-deception driving them)
What’s their wound? (The past that shaped them)
What’s their contradiction? (The trait that makes them human)
How do they relate to the tech? (Love, fear, mastery, resentment)

If you can answer all six, congratulations—you’ve built a person, not a plot device.

Final Transmission

Science fiction’s greatest trick is that it’s never really about the future. It’s about us, reflected in funhouse mirrors of chrome and starlight. Your characters are the mirror. Polish them until they gleam with humanity, and readers will follow them anywhere—even across the event horizon.Now go write something. And if your first draft is full of stupid mistakes, don’t worry—I know a good title for the collection.

What’s the trickiest character you’ve ever tried to write? Drop a comment below—let’s compare notes.

About the cover… I just published this: Eight Minutes Late

In April 1947, an eclipse of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede came eight minutes late. Eclipses don’t run late. Something had crossed the solar system.

Three miles south of Roswell, New Mexico, farmer and amateur astronomer Bill Taylor catches it first, on glass photographic plates. By summer, a quiet man from Washington and a truckload of Army men have taken every plate but the one Bill hid in the pantry. In July, debris comes down near Corona, and Bill is one of the few civilians who touches it. His wife, Ruth, will say she never could feel the warmth.

The government buries what it finds: a metal that matches nothing on the periodic table, that straightens when it’s bent and closes when it’s cut, and a larger device no one can open. A list of names goes into a file. A man in a gray suit keeps checking on the Taylor family for decades.

Nearly eighty years later, a gravitational-wave detector in California records a wave too large to measure. Earthquakes strike four continents. Long-silent volcanoes wake. A tsunami reaches Baja California. Ten stories under Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the sealed vault is opened again, and an illness that has haunted it since 1948 begins to kill.

Lisa Taylor, Bill’s granddaughter, is a biochemist at the University of New Mexico who studies how bacteria survive by switching genes off and waiting. When a presidential liaison brings her underground, she carries a ticking tin from the family farm and the question no one has answered in nearly eighty years: why some people live and others don’t. The answer is in the blood. It may be in hers.

Spanning three generations, from a New Mexico farm in 1947 to Huntsville, Alabama, and far past the Moon, Eight Minutes Late is a grounded, emotional first-contact thriller about a family, a secret, and something that has been waiting a very long time.
For readers of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain, and Carl Sagan’s Contact.

The Art of the Critique

Rereading some of my older novels recently, I came to an uncomfortable realization: I should have had more eyes on those manuscripts before I hit publish. The typos I missed, the subplot that never quite paid off, the character whose motivations made perfect sense in my head and nowhere else on the page. All of it might have been caught had I simply asked for help.That is the case for building a small group of beta readers or joining a critique group, and the reasons go well beyond catching errors. There is real value in surrounding yourself with like-minded people who understand the work, who speak the language of structure and pacing and voice. But the practical benefits matter just as much. Distributing advance reader copies (ARCs) to a trusted circle gives you something no amount of solitary revision can: honest, unfiltered reactions from readers encountering your story for the first time.What follows is a look at why beta readers are essential, how authors can receive feedback without flinching, and how critics can shape their notes into something genuinely useful.

Writing a story is a solitary act, but polishing it into something truly compelling is a collaborative dance. Whether you are refining a debut novel, a short story, or a nonfiction manuscript, the art of the critique is the bridge between a good draft and a great book. Below, we explore why beta readers are essential, how authors should receive feedback, and how the person offering the critique can make their notes as valuable as possible.

Why You Should Have Beta Readers

Fresh eyes, fresh perspective. After weeks (or months) of living inside your manuscript, it is easy to miss plot holes, pacing issues, or inconsistencies. Beta readers provide the outside viewpoint that spots what you have become blind to.

Diverse voices. A single friend’s opinion can be helpful, but a small panel of readers with varying backgrounds, reading habits, and genre expectations uncovers a broader range of strengths and weaknesses.

Real-world validation. If multiple beta readers point out the same problem, such as a confusing character motive, that is a strong signal you need to rework the element before it reaches a wider audience.

Motivation boost. Positive, specific feedback fuels momentum. Knowing someone enjoyed a particular scene can reaffirm your instincts and keep you moving forward.

How the Author Should Listen

Stay open, not defensive. The critique is about the work, not about you. Treat every comment as data you can evaluate rather than a personal attack.

Take detailed notes. Write down each piece of feedback verbatim, even if your initial reaction is “I disagree.” You can revisit the note later with a cooler head.

Look for patterns. One isolated comment might be an outlier, but if three readers highlight the same pacing issue, it is probably worth addressing.

Prioritize actionable items. Not every suggestion needs to be implemented. Separate the “nice to have” ideas from the “must fix” problems, then create a concrete revision plan.

Show appreciation. A quick thank-you note or a small token of gratitude, such as a signed bookmark or a mention in the acknowledgments, strengthens the relationship for future projects.

How the Critic Should Listen and Take Notes

Read with intent. Before you start, decide what you will focus on: plot coherence, character development, pacing, voice, and so on. This keeps your feedback targeted.

Be specific, not vague. Instead of “the ending feels off,” try “the climax resolves too quickly; consider extending the final showdown to heighten tension.

“Balance praise and critique. Begin with what works, then move to areas for improvement. A balanced approach makes the author more receptive.

Use the “sandwich” method. Opening with a positive observation, following with a constructive one, and closing with another positive helps soften criticism while still delivering the necessary insights.

Write down your thoughts promptly. As soon as a reaction surfaces, jot it down. The longer you wait, the more likely the nuance will fade.

Ask clarifying questions. If something confuses you, ask the author for clarification rather than assuming a flaw. Doing so can uncover intentional stylistic choices you may have missed.

Bringing It All Together

The critique process is a two-way street.Beta readers supply the raw data: highlights, blind spots, and emotional reactions.Authors act as the analysts, sorting, prioritizing, and deciding what to rewrite.Critics, whether formal editors or friendly reviewers, act as coaches, offering clear, actionable guidance while listening to the author’s intentions.When every participant embraces active listening, respectful communication, and organized note-taking, the manuscript evolves with purpose rather than guesswork.

Critiquing is not about tearing a story apart; it is about building it up. Treat each piece of feedback as a building block, and you will find that the finished work shines brighter than you ever imagined. Happy writing, and happy critiquing.

Before You Go

If this post resonated with you, I would love for you to stick around a while longer.Check out my books. You can browse my full catalog on my Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Scott-Taylor/author/B0BQCX3SRH

Every title there has been shaped, in one way or another, by the kind of feedback this post is about. Some more than others, as I have admitted.

Like, share, and comment. If you found something useful here, give the post a like so others can find it too. Share it with a writing friend who is sitting on a finished draft and wondering what comes next. And most of all, drop a comment below. I want to hear from you.

Do you work with beta readers or a critique group?
What is the single most useful note anyone has ever given you on your writing?
Is there a piece of feedback you ignored and later wished you had taken?

The whole point of a critique is conversation, so let’s have one. I read and respond to every comment.Happy writing, and happy critiquing.

The Business of Writing: Conventions, Time, and the Chair You Should Be Sitting In

Is time management a skill you should have as a writer?

Greetings writers, readers, authors, and want-to-bees!At one of those writers conventions where you get to pitch your work in progress for X dollars, I sat in on several of the speakers and mini classes. I am not going to say it was a waste of time, but… I should have had my butt in this chair writing or managing the business instead of sitting there listening to them. It might have just been that convention, but…Let’s talk about the business of writing a little more.

WREM: The Framework That Keeps Me Honest

Last time I wrote about this, I coined the acronym WREM: Write, Research, Edit, Market. It’s the four pillars of this gig, and if you’re honest with yourself, most writers are great at one or two and terrible at the others. (Most of us love the W and quietly pretend the M doesn’t exist.)This blog post? This is the M. Marketing. You never know; someone might read it and want to check out my books. If so… go here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Scott-Taylor/author/B0BQCX3SRHSee what I did there? That’s marketing. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to exist.

The Convention Conundrum

Here’s the thing about writers conventions: they sell you hope by the hour. Pitch sessions, agent speed-dating, panels on “breaking in.” Some of it is genuinely valuable. Conferences can help you make contact with new authors, publishers, and agents, and the smart approach is to treat the event like a business investment: think like a businessperson and present yourself as a smart buy. The best events blend craft workshops, marketing sessions, and networking with agents and editors.But here’s what nobody tells you: the value of a convention is what you do before and after it, not what happens in the ballroom. If you pay $X to pitch your book and you haven’t spent time making the book (or your author platform) worth pitching, you’ve bought a lottery ticket, not a career move.So before you register for the next one, ask yourself:

What specifically do I need from this event? (Contacts? Craft? Motivation? A kick in the pants?)
Could that X dollars be better spent on an editor, cover art, or ads?
Would the hours be better spent in the chair?

Sometimes the answer is yes, go. Sometimes the answer is: your butt belongs in the chair.

Time Management: The Great Equalizer

Now let’s talk about using your allocated time well.I am retired, so I can spend any day that ends in a Y writing for as long as I desire. Many of you still work, and that is not an option, so time management is a skill you should learn, not a nice-to-have.Here’s the honest math. If you work a full-time job, you don’t have less ambition than I do; you have less unstructured time. That means your time needs structure more than mine does. A few approaches that work:

Treat writing like a shift, not a mood. Waiting for inspiration is a hobby. Scheduling it is a business. Thirty minutes before work, thirty minutes at lunch, or a protected hour after the kids are in bed: whatever it is, put it on the calendar like a dentist appointment.
Match the task to the time slot. Not all WREM tasks need the same brain. Drafting (Write) needs deep focus. Research can be done in scraps. Editing works in medium chunks. Marketing (social posts, newsletters, blog posts like this one) can be done in 15-minute pockets. Stop trying to draft a chapter in a 20-minute window and failing, then calling yourself undisciplined. That’s not a discipline problem; that’s a scheduling problem.
Audit where your writing hours actually go. Track one week. Most writers discover they have more time than they thought; it’s just currently being spent on things that don’t end with a finished manuscript.
Protect the chair. The single most profitable piece of real estate in this business is the seat of your writing chair. Every hour there compounds. Every hour listening to someone else talk about writing… may or may not.

Marketing Without Losing Your Soul

Here’s a mindset shift that took me too long to learn: don’t chase dollars; invest in people. Put energy into connecting with your readers, think about who they are and what they want, and fold your creativity into your bookselling instead of treating marketing like a punishment.This blog post is exactly that. I’m not shouting “BUY MY BOOKS” into the void (okay, I linked my Amazon page, but still). I’m talking with you about something we both care about: the craft and the business of this weird, wonderful job. If you like how I think, you might like how I write. That’s the whole trick.

The Bottom Line

Writing is a business. The creative part is the product; everything else (conventions, pitches, platforms, this very post) is the shop around it. You don’t have to love the business side, but you do have to show up for it. And when you’re deciding between a $500 convention seat and 50 hours in the chair?More often than not, the chair wins.Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a W to get back to. And if any of this resonated, or you just want to see what all that chair time produced, my books are right here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Scott-Taylor/author/B0BQCX3SRHWrite on. 📝

I Wrote Another One, and This Time It Has Legs

“It’s a fish. Where can it go?”

SPOTS

A Novel of Small-Town Horror — COMING SOON

Tina Mayhew is thirty-eight.Divorced. Broke. Three weeks from losing the pet shop her father built on Marginal Street.So when a traveling dealer walks in with a cooler and a promise, she doesn’t ask enough questions.She never does.

Inside the cooler is a fish.Bulging gold eyes. A mouth like a frog’s. Four stubby legs.It watches her.And it’s pregnant.

By spring, its hundreds of babies have turned Marrow Creek, Georgia, into a roadside sensation.Kids name them. Tourists line up around the block. Local news sends a van.The ledger goes from red ink to black.Tina finally sleeps through the night.

Then, at three o’clock one morning, every tank in the store breaks open at once.

The bodies start turning up at the lake.The FBI comes. Then the Army. Then the walls.Nobody uses the word quarantine. Everybody knows the word.

So Tina does what anyone would do when the world stops making sense.She goes home.Two counties north. The white farmhouse. Her mother’s pot roast. Her father’s pipe smoke. The kindest man she has ever known, waiting on the porch with his hands in his pockets like nothing in the world is wrong.

Her father keeps a parrot that has never once flown.He has a fat striped cat named Spots that purrs like a motorboat.And he has a locked door behind the canning shelves.

Some monsters come out of the lake.Some come home with you.And some curl up in your lap and purr.

Perfect for readers who love:

Small towns with long memories. Family secrets with teeth. Slow-burn dread that detonates. The creeping horror of Stephen King’s Castle Rock, the biological nightmare of Jurassic Park, and the quiet, domestic terror of realizing the danger was never outside the house.Pet lovers: you will never look at your cat the same way again.

Spots — Coming Soon.

Stay tuned. 🐟

One warning before it drops.Read it during the day.And put something heavy on the lid of the fish tank.

The Art of Dialogue: Pacing and Voice That Bring Characters to Life

Yesterday we talked about dialogue. Tonight (yes, it is tonight for me here in Texas), I want to talk about pacing, which I promised.

Dialogue is where fiction breathes. It’s the moment readers stop being told about your characters and start experiencing them directly. But writing dialogue that feels alive requires more than just recording how people talk. Two elements separate flat exchanges from unforgettable conversations: pacing and distinct character voice. Let’s explore both.

Why Dialogue Pacing Matters

Pacing is the rhythm of your conversation, controlling how fast or slow it moves, when it lingers, and when it snaps. Get it right, and readers lean in. Get it wrong, and even the most dramatic scene falls flat.Here’s why pacing carries so much weight:It controls tension. Short, clipped exchanges create urgency and conflict. Longer, meandering dialogue creates intimacy or ease. A heated argument written in flowing, elaborate sentences feels wrong because real tension compresses speech.It reveals emotional states. A character who suddenly speaks in fragments is rattled. One who monologues might be nervous, controlling, or evasive. Pacing shows us what characters feel without announcing it.It respects reader attention. Conversations that move too slowly bore readers; ones that move too fast leave them disoriented. Good pacing keeps them engaged and oriented.

Tips for Pacing Dialogue Well

Match rhythm to emotion. When stakes rise, shorten your sentences and trim the fat.

			
"Where is she?"
"I don't know."
"Where is she?"
"I said I don't ..."
"Don't lie to me."

		

Notice how the removed dialogue tags and short lines accelerate the scene. Compare that to a calm evening chat, where sentences can stretch and breathe.

Use beats, not just tags. Action beats, those small physical movements, control pace beautifully. They act like punctuation, giving readers a breath and grounding the scene physically.

She set down her coffee. "I'm not going with you."

The beat slows the moment and adds weight to her refusal.

Cut the pleasantries. Real conversations are full of “hello,” “how are you,” and small talk. Fiction usually shouldn’t be. Enter scenes late and leave early; start the dialogue at the interesting part.
Vary your rhythm. A page of nothing but short, punchy lines becomes exhausting; a page of long speeches becomes tedious. Alternate to create a natural, musical flow.
Let silence speak. Sometimes the most powerful pacing tool is what isn’t said. A character who doesn’t answer, or who changes the subject, can be more revealing than any line of dialogue.
Read it aloud. Your ear catches what your eye misses. If you stumble, run out of breath, or feel bored, your readers will too.

Giving Each Character a Unique Voice

Now to an excellent question: how does a writer make each character so distinct that dialogue tags become almost unnecessary? This is one of the true marks of craft. When done well, readers know who’s speaking from the words alone.Here’s how to achieve it:

Give characters different vocabularies. Word choice reveals background, education, personality, and worldview. A retired professor and a teenage skateboarder should not sound the same. Consider a character’s era, region, profession, and interests, all of which shape which words come naturally to them.
Vary sentence structure and length. Some characters speak in long, winding thoughts. Others are terse. One might use precise, grammatically perfect sentences; another rambles and interrupts themselves. This rhythm becomes a fingerprint.
Establish verbal habits and tics. People have patterns: a phrase they overuse, a tendency to answer questions with questions, a habit of apologizing or hedging. Used sparingly, these become instantly recognizable. Just don’t overdo it, or the character becomes a caricature.
Consider what characters talk about. A pragmatist steers conversation toward solutions; a romantic drifts toward feelings; a cynic deflects with jokes. What a character chooses to address reveals as much as how they say it.
Use subtext driven by personality. Different people avoid different truths. One character dodges emotion; another dodges responsibility. How a character doesn’t answer is deeply individual.
Reflect their relationships. People speak differently depending on who they’re addressing. A character might be gentle with a child, guarded with a boss, and sharp with a rival. This dynamic voice adds realism and dimension.

A Quick Test

Try this exercise: write a page of dialogue between two characters, then delete every tag and beat. Give it to a friend, or reread it after a day, and see if you can tell who’s speaking. If you can, you’ve nailed distinct voice. If you can’t, study where the voices blur together and sharpen the differences.

Bringing It Together

Great dialogue is a duet of pacing and voice. Pacing controls the tempo and tension of the scene, while distinct voices ensure that every line points unmistakably to its speaker. Master both, and you can strip away most of your dialogue tags, trusting your characters to carry the conversation on their own. That’s when your dialogue stops feeling written and starts feeling overheard, and that’s exactly where you want your readers to be.

Because I truly care about those who follow this blog and are trying to write here is a demonstration of what I am talking about.

Here’s a scene between a high school teacher and a student. I’ve built in two distinct voices and used pacing shifts to carry the emotional beats. After the scene, I’ll break down exactly what’s doing the work.

The bell had rung ten minutes ago. Marcus still stood by the door, backpack hanging off one shoulder, waiting for the room to empty.

Ms. Okafor didn’t look up from her stack of essays. “You’re going to be late for lunch, Mr. Reyes.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just.” He shifted his weight. “So I got the paper back.”

“You did.”

“And there’s a big red D on it.”

“There is.” She set down her pen and folded her hands. “Would you like to talk about the D, or would you like to talk about why it doesn’t surprise me?”

He blinked. “The second one, I guess. Wait, no. Both?”

“Sit.”

He sat.

“Your thesis,” she said, “was the finest sentence in that entire paper. Genuinely. I read it twice. And then you spent four pages ignoring it completely.”

“I didn’t ignore it. I like. Circled back to it. At the end.”

“You mentioned it at the end. That is not the same as building toward it. A thesis is a promise, Marcus. You made a promise on page one and then you wandered off to tell me about a movie.”

“It was a relevant movie.”

“It was not.”

“It was kind of relevant.”

She almost smiled. He saw it and pounced.

“See, you agree.”

“I agree that you are charming, which is a completely separate matter from whether you can write.” She slid the paper across the desk. “Rewrite it. Same thesis. Keep the promise this time. I’ll grade the new one instead.”

He stared at the paper. “You’d do that?”

“I already did the hard part. I found the good sentence. You just have to deserve it.”

What’s Doing the Work Distinct vocabulary and sentence structure. Ms. Okafor speaks in complete, controlled sentences. She uses precise diction (“genuinely,” “completely separate matter”) and metaphor (“a thesis is a promise”). Marcus speaks in fragments, filler, and false starts (“It’s just,” “I like. Circled back”). You could delete every dialogue tag in their exchange and still know who’s talking, because their rhythms are opposites.

Pacing that mirrors emotion. The scene opens slow, with hesitation. Marcus stalls; his lines break apart. Once Ms. Okafor takes control (“Sit.” / He sat.), the exchange tightens into quick volleys. Those clipped one and two word lines (“You did.” / “There is.”) accelerate the tension and put her firmly in charge.

Beats instead of tags. Notice how few “he said / she said” tags appear. Physical beats do the work instead: “He shifted his weight,” “She set down her pen and folded her hands,” “He blinked.” Each beat controls tempo and grounds the reader without announcing the speaker.

Subtext driven by personality. Marcus deflects with humor (“It was a relevant movie”) because he’s embarrassed and wants approval. Ms. Okafor withholds warmth strategically, then releases just enough (“She almost smiled”) to keep him hooked. Neither says what they actually feel. He wants to be told he’s smart; she wants him to earn it. The scene never states this outright.

Enter late, leave early. We join after the bell, skipping the greeting entirely, and we exit on the strongest line rather than watching Marcus pack up and leave. The pleasantries are gone, so only the charged moment remains.

Unless there are more comments or questions we will discuss Genre next.

If even one idea here clicked for you, this post did its job.Do me a small favor: hit like, leave a comment with your biggest dialogue struggle, and share this with a fellow writer who’s staring at a blinking cursor tonight.

Writing can feel lonely, and a little encouragement goes a long way.

Follow for more, and remember, every great conversation on the page started with a writer brave enough to try. That’s you.

About the Cover

The Ocean Within is a gripping, science-driven thriller that explores the fragile balance between humanity and the forces of nature. Perfect for fans of Michael Crichton, Andy Weir, and Kim Stanley Robinson, this novel will leave you breathless, and questioning how much we really understand about the world beneath our feet.

“White Noise” to Flock in Florida

🚨 Sheriff, Hear Me Out: Why “They Only Track Cars” Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story on Flock Cameras

I have a lot of respect for the Polk County Sheriff. He’s earned it. So when he recently offered his take on Flock cameras, essentially arguing that critics are overreacting because “they only track cars”…I paid attention. I always do when someone I respect weighs in on an issue I care about.But respectfully, Sheriff: you’re wrong on this one. And I think the details matter enough that it’s worth walking through exactly why. Perhaps you should get some coffee….

“They Only Track Cars”—Then Why Are They in the Park?

Here’s my first problem with that argument: if these cameras only track cars, why are they pointed at parks where cars don’t go? Why are they positioned along walking paths where the only thing passing by is a person on foot, a stroller, or a dog on a leash?That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s a factual inconsistency in the “just cars” defense. If the technology were strictly limited to vehicle tracking, we wouldn’t see it deployed in pedestrian-only spaces. The placement alone tells you the scope of what’s being captured is broader than the official talking point suggests.And that’s before we even get to what these cameras are capable of, versus what they’re currently doing.

AI Is Already There. The Microphones Just Aren’t Turned On. Yet, well maybe not turned on. They are called Raven.

This is the part that should give everyone pause, regardless of where you stand politically: these are AI-driven systems, and not all of the features have been activated—yet.The microphone capability, for example, exists in the hardware. It’s just not turned on right now.That “right now” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Because here’s the thing about surveillance infrastructure: once it’s built, once it’s installed, once it’s normalized in your community, the switch from “capability that exists but isn’t used” to “capability that is now active” is a policy decision—not a technical one. And policy decisions are made by people. People we elect.Which brings me to the real heart of my disagreement.

Elections Have Consequences. Look at New York.

Sheriff, I know you’re a good actor operating this technology responsibly right now. I believe that. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the safeguards on this technology aren’t really safeguards—they’re the personal restraint of whoever currently holds power.Today, we have semi-reliable guardrails around traffic light cameras and police body cameras. Not perfect, but functional enough that most people trust the system isn’t being weaponized against them personally. Those guardrails didn’t happen by accident—they were built over years of legal battles, public pressure, and hard-won policy fights.Flock cameras don’t have that history. They don’t have that infrastructure of accountability. What they have is enormous, largely untested capability—deployed before the legal and regulatory framework caught up to it.And that’s where elections come in. Look at New York. Look at how quickly the tenor of law enforcement priorities can shift when a different administration takes office, when a different DA is elected, when a different set of political incentives suddenly control the levers of power.Now ask yourself: what happens when a technology that was previously “neutered” by a responsible operator—someone like you, Sheriff—gets handed to someone who isn’t? What happens when a candidate wins office specifically because they promised to use every tool available, with no restraint, against people they’ve decided are enemies?This isn’t hypothetical paranoia. It’s the entire history of surveillance technology in America. Every tool built with good intentions has, at some point, been used by someone with bad ones. The question was never whether Flock cameras could be misused—it’s when, and by whom.That’s the slippery slope. And once you’re on it, there’s no walking it back. You can’t un-invent the microphone in the camera. You can’t un-train the AI model. You can only hope the person controlling it stays reasonable forever. That’s not a safeguard. That’s a gamble.

I’ll Give You This Much: The Tech Is Outpacing the Law

I want to be fair here, Sheriff, because I think you raise a real point even if I disagree with your conclusion: the technology absolutely is outpacing the laws meant to govern it.That’s not a defense of Flock cameras—it’s actually the core of my argument against rushing to deploy them without guardrails first. The right sequence isn’t “deploy now, regulate later.” It’s “regulate first, then deploy.” Once these systems are active, embedded, and normalized across thousands of communities, the political will to roll back capabilities—or to legislate meaningful restrictions—evaporates. It’s far easier to prevent a surveillance state from being built than to dismantle one after the fact.Before these systems go fully active—before every bell and whistle gets switched on—the guardrails need to be in place. Not after. Not “we’ll figure it out once problems arise.” Before.

And Let’s Not Forget: This Is a Private Company Making Bank

Here’s another wrinkle worth sitting with: Flock Safety is a private company, and it’s profiting handsomely from this expansion.We’ve seen this movie before. Remember Ring? A private company selling home security cameras that quietly built partnerships with police departments, shared footage without clear consent, and created a sprawling, decentralized surveillance network—all while marketing itself as a neighborhood safety tool.Flock is following a similar playbook, just with far more centralized power and far more data. When a private company’s business model depends on expanding surveillance infrastructure and selling access to that data to as many law enforcement agencies as possible, their incentives are not the same as the public’s incentives. Profit motive and civil liberties don’t naturally align, and we shouldn’t pretend they do just because the marketing materials use words like “safety” and “community.”

Why This Isn’t Just About Cars

I’ve written before about how Flock cameras fundamentally differ from something like a traffic light camera, and the differences aren’t small. Let me remind you of a few key facts, Sheriff, that I think undercut the “it’s just cars” framing:

Danger/Feature	Flock Cameras (ALPRs)	Traffic Light Cameras
Surveillance Scope	All vehicles, all times, all locations	Only violations, specific locations
Data Retention	7–30 days default, indefinite for investigations	Short, violation-focused
Data Sharing	Nationwide, multi-agency, private & federal access	Local, limited, not networked
Oversight	Often lacking, weak audits, no warrants	Regulated, limited access
Documented Misuse	Stalking, personal disputes, unauthorized searches	Rare
Civil Liberties Risks	Mass surveillance, chilling effects, hacking risk	Minimal, targeted enforcement

Traffic light cameras are triggered by a specific violation, capture a specific moment, and typically purge non-violation data within days. Flock cameras run continuously, retain data indefinitely once flagged, and feed into networks that span thousands of agencies, law enforcement and private entities alike, often without a warrant.There have already been documented cases of officers misusing license-plate-reader systems to track people they personally knew. That’s not a “just cars” problem. That’s a power problem. And power, unchecked, tends to find new and creative ways to be misused.

Documented Cases Where Flock Cameras Were Used to Track People (Not Just Cars)

#	Date / Location	What Happened	How the Camera Was Used
1	June 2026 – Public Trail (Condor camera demonstration)	A reporter filmed a Condor‑mounted Flock camera pivoting, following, and zooming on her as she walked the trail, proving the system can lock onto a person in real time.	The camera’s pan‑tilt‑zoom (PTZ) capability was illustrated, showing it can “track” an individual rather than merely read a license plate.
2	2025 – Milwaukee, WI (Officer Josue Ayala)	The officer searched the license‑plate number of his ex‑girlfriend > 200 times over two months, using the Flock interface to locate her movements.	The system was employed as a personal “people‑search” tool, not for any traffic violation.
3	2025 – Covington, GA	A detective was fired after an internal‑affairs investigation showed he had used the Flock portal to track a female coworker 41 times between January and July.	The officer accessed the real‑time routing feature to monitor the coworker’s vehicle and, by extension, her location.
4	2024 – Multiple U.S. jurisdictions (404 Media investigation)	Police departments entered descriptive searches such as “heavy‑set male with a black‑and‑white hat,” “person on skateboard,” and “person wearing orange vest and construction hat” to find individuals, bypassing the license‑plate‑only design.	The ALPR interface was used to locate specific people based on physical characteristics, effectively turning the system into a people‑tracker.
5	2025 – General findings reported by Engadget	Dozens of documented instances were compiled showing officers using Flock to stalk ex‑girlfriends, current partners, and other personal targets.	The system’s “real‑time routing” and historical search logs allowed officers to see where a suspect’s car (and thus the person) had been.
6	2025 – Omaha, NE (court documents)	A police officer accessed Flock data to locate an undercover officer’s vehicle after a tip, effectively using the system to pinpoint a person of interest.	The camera network supplied the officer’s location by matching the undercover cop’s license plate, but the intent was to identify the person behind the car.

7	2025 – Oklahoma City (reported by Mother Jones)	A police officer used the Flock portal to locate a former romantic partner by repeatedly searching her license‑plate number and reviewing the car’s movement history.	The officer’s motive was personal, not law‑enforcement‑related, showing the system’s capacity for non‑criminal people tracking.

What These Cases Reveal

People‑centric searches: Officers are entering descriptive, non‑vehicle queries (e.g., “person wearing orange vest”), proving that the system can be used to locate individuals based on appearance, not just a license plate.
Real‑time routing feature: The “START REAL‑TIME ROUTING” button (seen in multiple investigations) lets users watch a vehicle’s live path, effectively turning the camera into a live‑tracking tool for the person inside.
Personal stalker cases: Several documented incidents involve officers using the system to monitor ex‑girlfriends, coworkers, or acquaintances—clear evidence of misuse beyond legitimate public‑safety purposes.
Broad deployment: These examples span multiple states (Wisconsin, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and national investigations), indicating that the issue isn’t isolated to a single department.

While Flock cameras are marketed as “license‑plate‑only” tools, the documented cases above demonstrate that law‑enforcement agencies have repeatedly leveraged the technology to track people—often for personal, non‑criminal reasons. This reveals a gap between the company’s public statements and the reality of how the system is being employed on the ground.

Here is where the “white noise”comes from… Why the Confusion Exists

Misinformation online – Reddit threads and social‑media posts sometimes claim “Flock cameras are already tracking Bluetooth/Wi‑Fi,” but experts and the company’s own documentation refute those claims, pointing out that the only Bluetooth present is for maintenance, not data capture .

Third‑party add‑ons – Vendors like Leonardo DRS are actively marketing SignalTrace to police departments that already have ALPRs (including some that use Flock). When a department buys both, it can look like a single “Flock‑plus‑SignalTrace” system, even though the underlying camera itself remains unchanged.

And here are more facts: Multiple independent reports confirm that the Raven audio‑detection module has already been installed and is actively paired with Flock Safety’s Falcon ALPR cameras in several jurisdictions.

Source	What it says
Reddit – r/FlockSurveillance	Users report that “some cities are adding the Raven microphone to their flock cams” and describe it as an upgrade from a pure shot‑detection system to a broader “distress‑sound” detector
OFFICER Magazine	Describes the Raven as an “audio detection device that detects gunshots, locates the source, and works in tandem with the Flock Safety Falcon™ ALPR camera”
WANE‑15 (Fort Wayne, IN)	Announces a pilot where the Raven “integrates directly with Flock Safety’s broader investigative platform … allowing officers to compare audio alerts with license‑plate‑reader information” .
GovTech	Explains that “Raven can trigger cameras to begin recording, but it relies on cameras to do the actual processing … Flock Safety plans to rely solely on its AI algorithms to identify a sound” .
City of El Mirany blog	Notes that “when gunfire is detected, any existing FLOCK Safety Falcon license‑plate‑recognition camera nearby is automatically activated to capture additional visual evidence”.
Wikipedia (June 2026 entry)	Cites a WSLS‑TV report that a “Flock device, identified as a Flock Raven …” was deployed in the field .

These pieces come from different media types (industry magazines, local news, a city‑government blog, a community‑run forum, and a reputable encyclopedia entry) and all converge on the same fact: the Raven audio sensor is being mounted on, and actively used with, existing Flock cameras.

What “active” looks like in practice

Audio‑triggered recording – When the Raven’s AI recognises a qualifying sound (e.g., a gunshot or a scream), it sends an approximate location to the Falcon camera, which then starts recording video of the scene .
Data fusion in FlockOS – The audio alert is logged alongside the license‑plate reads, letting investigators correlate sound events with vehicle movements .
Pilot deployments – Fort Wayne’s police department is testing this integration, and other agencies such as Morgan Hill PD and Albany PD have publicly announced full‑scale use.

Why the evidence matters

Transparency & oversight – Knowing that the audio component is already live underscores the urgency of establishing clear policies (data retention, civilian oversight, audible‑recording consent) before further roll‑outs.

Surveillance scope widens – The original ALPR only captured static vehicle data; Raven adds a real‑time acoustic layer that can pick up events even when no car is present (e.g., a shooting in a park).

Potential for mission creep – Because the audio feeds are automatically linked to video, the system can be used for situational awareness far beyond the original “license‑plate only” premise.

And lets not forget about Flock Alpha…Drones.

Sheriff, I don’t doubt your intentions. I don’t doubt that, under your watch, this technology is being used responsibly. But my objection has never really been about you. It’s about the next person. And the person after that. And whether the guardrails we build now will hold when someone with very different intentions eventually takes the reins.”They only track cars” isn’t a safeguard, it’s a description of current, voluntary restraint. And voluntary restraint is not a substitute for enforceable law. Before we flip on every feature this AI is capable of before the microphones go live, before the data-sharing networks expand further, before we hand this much power to a private company with a profit motive, we need real guardrails in place. Not because I think you’ll misuse this technology, Sheriff. But because I guarantee you, someone eventually will. And by then, it’ll be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

Have a Good day!

Below is a link to his side of the debate… https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1HHNQu4fVT/

Suggested reading on the subject is Orwell’s 1984, perhaps you heard of it?

If that is not enough, try my latest novel…The Corrected City its a page turner.

Nobody remembers the first camera.
Twenty years after the Year of Fires, the city is safe. Assault is down eighty percent. Nobody has been murdered in eleven years. The screens say good morning by name, the clinics answer in minutes, and the past is kept tidy by people like Mara Venn, who has spent eleven years at the Ministry of Public Memory correcting the record so that no citizen ever has to live inside a contradiction.

Then a corrupted file comes across her desk, and she is very good at her job, and she restores it.
What surfaces is four minutes of footage the official history cannot survive, a wind reading nobody bothered to falsify, twenty-seven names missing from a memorial roll, and a photographer in a government coat who tipped his head to the right exactly the way her sister does.

She can prove it. She cannot prove it to anybody who would still be alive afterward, starting with her sister, who reads the names of the dead on air to four hundred thousand people and believes every word.
A near-future thriller about surveillance that arrives as kindness, history that is corrected rather than censored, and the quiet, decades-long work of putting the truth somewhere it can be found.

They Called Me Dumbass

Why You Should Look Up the Words You Don’t Know

For years, I thought my name was Dumbass.True story. I heard it in the classroom, on the playground, and at home, and I never once questioned it. When you’re a small child, you don’t argue with the world. You believe what it tells you about yourself. And what the world told me, over and over, was that I was slow, that I was broken, that I was the kid who just didn’t get it.Imagine your own father handing you a broom and a dustpan and telling you that the world needs ditch diggers and janitors too. “Here,” he says. “See if you can figure this out.” That was the ceiling someone else built for me before I was old enough to know I could reach higher.This was the 1960s. Back then, they didn’t diagnose learning disabilities; they labeled the children who had them, and the labels stuck like tar. There were no specialists pulling you aside, no gentle explanations, no understanding that a mind could simply work differently. There was only a single, brutal word for a kid like me, and everyone seemed to agree on it: stupid.So I wore it. I answered to it. For years, I honestly believed that was who I was.

The People Who Saw Me

I made it a point to befriend the school janitor. Many afternoons, I would walk the halls beside him as he went about his work, and yes, I helped him. His name was Jack, and Jack was a noble man. He didn’t treat me like gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He treated me like a person. When you’ve been told you’re nothing, you never forget the ones who decide otherwise.But here’s the thing the adults never understood: the problem was never that I couldn’t learn. The problem was that when I looked at text, the words came apart. The letters jumbled together and refused to make sense. It wasn’t until my second attempt at second grade that things began to become clear. I excelled at math, yet when it came to reading, I had nothing. Nada.Still, that math ability told me something important. I could remember almost everything I heard, and I could work through numbers with ease. So I came to a conclusion of my own, one that no teacher ever handed me: I was not stupid. I was an audible learner. My mind worked. It just worked differently.

The Hallway

That realization didn’t make things easy. I struggled, and the frustration ran deeper than words can capture. My third-grade teacher, worn thin by that frustration, would send me out into the hallway during reading so I wouldn’t distract the rest of the class. She was not kind to me, and I felt every bit of it. A child sitting alone on cold tile while everyone else learns to read: that image has never left me.Then came a small accident that changed my life. I got my hands on an old college textbook, and I noticed that some of the lines were highlighted. When I traced a highlighted line with my finger, something remarkable happened. Voilà, the sentence made sense. Giving my eyes a single direction to follow was all I had ever needed.From there, I caught up with my classmates. I graduated early, without a single special education teacher guiding me. And what happened after graduation is a whole different story. I went to the half-price bookstore, bought textbooks in every subject I had done poorly in, and taught myself every last page.The boy they called Dumbass taught himself.

Why This Matters to You

Words matter. They have the power to shape our perceptions, influence our emotions, and drive our actions. They are the very building blocks of thought, and the right word, expertly placed, is worth a paragraph of explanation.

I know this in my bones, because for years I lived without them, locked out of the one thing that could set me free.So when you skip over a word you don’t know, you aren’t saving time. You are leaving a small door closed. You are choosing not to grow.

Right now, I’m writing a dystopian science fiction novel centered on AI, and I use a great many technical terms in it.

Terms I understand. From fiction to neurology, from medical pathology to engineering, I spent years working as an engineer in the Medical Center. I remember everything I was exposed to there, including autopsies, surgeries, and much more. From music to flying, the vocabulary is real, and it is mine. Every word earned.

So when you’re reading this book on Kindle and you reach a word you don’t know, look it up. If you buy the print version (title to be announced, so follow for updates), you’ll find a glossary waiting in the back. Please use it.

We all have gifts, and we all have deficits. Not everyone shares the same intellect, and that is simply a fact, though it can feel like a hard one. But dehumanizing people because of it is wrong. We are all worthy of dignity, and we would all do well to remember that.

The kid in the hallway grew up. And he still believes in the power of a single, well-understood word. Currently I have close to thirty published novels and have written over 100,000,000 words. Did my third grade teacher telling me that the lights were on and nobody was home, help or hurt? You decide.

Before You Go

If any part of this story spoke to you, don’t let it be the end. Let it be the beginning.

Follow for updates on the book, including the title reveal and release date. Share this post with someone who needs to hear that a different mind is not a broken one. Comment below and tell me: what is a word you looked up recently, or a person like my Jack who refused to give up on you? I read every one.Best.

“From 9/11 to Flock Cameras: The Dystopian Novel I Started 15 Years Ago”

September 9, 2011, started like any other day. While stuck at a traffic light, I was on the phone with our New York office. Something happened; they put me on hold, and as I drove to the Dallas office, I listened to the world change. We can argue about the rumors that still surround Building 7, but suffice it to say, the world changed.

My normal way of dealing with grief is not to drone on about it with friends or family. My way is to write about it. If you follow me at all, you have no doubt read my blog post about writing letters or emails to people who are, let’s say, less than congenial. I use expletives and what have you to get the anger out of me and into the digital ethos, and of course, as much as I want to, I never send it. Burning bridges and being known as a hothead will get you nowhere.

Fast-forward six weeks after 9/11 and at least 3,000 deaths by “some people who did some things.” Bush and his administration enacted the Patriot Act, which is still alive and well today. The things those people did allowed our government to strip away some of our rights, trading them for safety. “Do you feel safe?”

Fast-forward to the Flock cameras, data centers, Alexa devices, smartphones, and, of course, drones. Do you feel safe?

Those Flock cameras, I learned, have microphones.

So, while spending these summer months of 100-plus-degree days clearing out old computer hardware, I found that file from 2011. I had started a book about a fictional city where a horrible event occurred, and much like the Patriot Act, what we see today closely resembles what I put into my book. Being a fan of Orwell, I wrote a dystopian near-future novel that is all but ready for one last edit.

Stay tuned for more updates and for when the book drops.

I am thinking about putting it on KDP Unlimited for those of you who can read it for free. Follow, hit that like button, and comment below if you have ideas you would like to share.Best,

Here is a link to my current books on Amazon.