Category: author

Who is your audience?

At some point, the discovery writer (pantster) must decide who their audience is?

Plotters have the advantage of planning to create a story for a group of people.

For instance, if I were to write a picture book, my audience would be young children.

If I were to write a romance, ladies would be the audience. Sure, some men also appreciate Hallmark-type stories.

As an example, I wrote a story called Jupiter’s Song. I targeted science fiction buffs, however… It is really a coming-of-age story that belongs on the Hallmark Channel. Almost any ‘nerd’ will commiserate with Ralph.

A young child (nerd) finds that his interest in science puts him at odds with society. That makes him a target of bullies. How Ralph navigates the social world of ‘humanity’ is the focus of this short story which is available in our writer’s group anthology on my amazon author site.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Scott-Taylor/author/B0BQCX3SRH

Marketing your book is critical to the process.

From the inception of your idea, an author needs to remember who their audience is. Most YA is written in the first person.

Many subject matter experts (SMEs) tend to put what they know in their stories.

One writer I know wrote a novel where they put tons of information on bicycles in the narrative. The story has nothing to do with that subject other than one of the characters rides one as a hobby. Does it move the story along? Is technical information on different types a distraction? Does it help or hurt the story? Do we care about the brand and the specifics of the brand when it adds zero value to the story? The focus of the book is aliens.

No, that is where a content editor is worth what you pay for. Whoever they used failed at their job.

‘Predators and editors’ is another topic I will cover in the future.

Another author is an SME on guns. What they ‘show off’ in their narrative has nothing to do with the story, plot, or what will happen. Those are just two examples of what not to do.

I don’t think we can pinpoint who coined the phrase ‘Kill Your Darlings,’ but they are correct.

In the movie industry, there is something called the cutting room floor. What ends up there are parts of the movie that don’t move the show along. Killing your darlings are things that the author loves but either detract from the plot or don’t move the story along.

Earth’s Last Hope is a science fiction fantasy with a strong female lead.

Romantic involvement as the subplot introduces the reader to the protagonist. Advanced writers will recognize the negative arc before it turns positive. There is no muddy middle, and I would start this book early in the day, so you are not up all night.

As a side note, I completely destroy the Earth, kill off 8 billion people, and we have a happy ending. In fact, you will love the finish. Don’t spoil it by attempting to read the ending first, as you won’t get it.

Read it one page at a time, and just enjoy it.

From that description, who is my audience?

I will give you a hint. It is written for today. 2023

In our anthology, I have a story called The Star People. ‘The Star People’ is the introduction to Dr. S. Richards. The negative arc comes from her brokenness from her dysfunctional family life as a child. The story in the anthology is a PG version of those chapters in Earth’s Last Hope.

If you are a writer, author, or want-to-be, I am the Carrollton League of Writers Executive Director. We meet in person and on Zoom.

After the pandemic, we decided to keep Zoom. Streaming services such as Zoom allow us to reach speakers, authors, and other creative types from around the globe.

If you want to speak with our group, please drop me an e-mail.

Frequently we have authors join us to talk about their work, how they got there, and so on.

I had a thought as I was closing this blog. Isn’t it odd that the UFO they shot down in Roswell in 1947 was later claimed to be a balloon? Where is that guy with the wild hair that screams Aliens? It seems we have a history with UFOs and balloons.

Staylor823@gmail.com

-Best

Scott Taylor

What the hell is going on?

To start this blog, let me first tell you that what you think is the truth is probably anything but.

As an author, I do my best not to be distracted by the news. Why?

First, the news is either broadcast through a lens of bias or is straight-out propaganda.

I like Bill Mahar, and I also like Ben Shapiro. Where have you been if you don’t know those names?

Bill is a classic liberal, and Ben is a traditional conservative. Both are intelligent people and worthy of your time.

Republicans and Democrats are dehumanized and marginalized by the media. If you have been brainwashed by the left, you won’t consider listening to a conservative. If, on the other hand, the right has bent your ear, you will dismiss anything you hear from the democrats.

It’s not enough to divide us along political ideologies. They need us divided along racial lines too.

Our current administration is going out of its way to curry favor with people who typically lean left by demonizing white males. I find what our leaders say offensive and, in the words of this generation, cray cray.

Bill went on Ben’s show. He clearly had based much of his ideology on talking points by the left.

I don’t think Ben shifted his opinions by anything Bill had to say. On the other hand, I moved some of my thoughts by what I heard. While both men are articulate and funny, I think Ben’s opinions are based on history and reality vs. what Bill heard on CNN.

The first lesson in life is,

Don’t believe everything that you hear.
Follow the money.
Just maybe you can judge a book by its cover.
Watch what someone does, and discount what they say until their actions match their values.

The world is a crazy place. Megalomaniacs with Nukes hold the entire world hostage. Weapons of mass destruction should be outlawed worldwide…period. I touch on this in my latest novel, Earth’s Last Hope.

If you wonder why there are so many shootings, you must follow where people get their input.

Hollywood
The Media
The gaming industry

Garbage in equals garbage out.

When we think of a time when the world, or at least this country (USA), was at its peak, Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver were what we watched. Shows with moral construct.

Acting up in school would get your butt warmed up rather nicely. It was both painful and humiliating. It should be.

Gun Reform is not the answer. Mental illness is.

We will never fix the problem. Both the entertainment industry and the gaming industry own too many lawmakers.

Until we clean up DC, the world is in peril. Money is the root of all evil. Money turns into power, and power is addictive as any drug that was ever conceived.

While Elon thinks occupying Mars is the answer, we must look past Mars. Read my novel for my thoughts on the subject.

My thoughts are my own; I am not for sale. My book is.

If you like it, please give it a review.

You can find it on Amazon and the E-version on Smashwords.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1327396

-Best

Are We From Mars?

Are we mistaking climate change for evolution?

Stay tuned and be forewarned, I am a SciFi Author, and I think way outside the box.

I have studied Climate Change to some degree for years now. The first thing one must do is take politics out of the equation. Politics equals power and money. Corruption goes hand in hand with power plays, so one must remove the bias injected into the equation by discounting those with anything to gain.

When Greta came on the scene, the science she was parroting was faulty. You can make the graph say anything you want when you overlay data from different data sets. Hence the infamous hockey stick.

Politicians attempt to use harmful sound bites to steer the conversation, as people will more than likely click the headline that predicts the end of the world.

For the following few paragraphs, I want you to take a deep breath, sit back, and relax. I want you to clear your mind of the bullshit that has been spoon-fed to the world.

Again, I am a science fiction author. I think well outside the lines that those who educate us would like us to color in. I am not that person; I color outside the lines. I try to be the most argumentative person on the block if I think you’re wrong. Someone must stand up to the robots who want us all as slaves. I am that person.

There are solutions to the world’s difficulties that we may not look at because those resolutions are not inside the box. Those who own the media are controlled by oligarchs. Those people who got rich from screwing the little people. People like you and I, they want us to be smart enough to be useful idiots. When you are too old or damaged to be helpful, like a broken tool, they toss you in the dustbin. In this case, the dustbin is the end of the line in a disease-infested nursing home run by people who treat you like trash.

In my latest novel, Earth’s Last Hope, I weave into the tapestry of my story some primary hypotheses with fiction. The story is not heavy science and is more about us today and where we are headed if we don’t turn this ship around. To be clear, there are aliens, lusty ladies, space travel, Area 51, Roswell, and forbidden love. Before the main character’s arc goes positive, we live in the head of a person who is broken by her father and life.

You will love the main character and be impressed with the supporting cast.

There are many characters. Each plays an integral part in the story. As I wrote the book, I made notes of who was who, and for your enjoyment, I included that list of names. I know them each by heart. You might like to reference the ‘manifest’ in the back.

Many surprises, twists, and turns will keep you turning the pages.

If you want to know where the Earth is headed, look at Mars. If you have the ear of that climate change Greta person, tip her to this novel. Even she would like it.

What???

Yes, my friends, I have a pretty good idea based on a hypothesis that this planet will eventually go the way of Mars.

Someone will read my book or this blog, take the ideas, and claim them for themselves.

I can guarantee that plagiarism, theft of ideas, and so forth are rampant on the internet.

I have had novels stolen, translated into different languages, posted in other countries, and sold. I don’t make money. Someone else does.

I am going to address climate change…I will also tell you why this planet has headed the way of Mars.

Are you ready?

Are we going to be flooded by rising oceans?

Is the weather more intense because your grandfather drives a hummer?

No… We are in much more danger of humanity being snuffed out by lunatics who think you can win a war with Nukes. …

Again…look to Mars… Mars was once a blue planet. How can that be?

Are you scratching your head yet?

Do you want to know how that can be?

Here is a hint, if you want to know the future of Venus, look at the Earth.

If you have read this far and are intrigued, you could do me a solid and buy my book. I get a small cup of coffee for every book sold. Bezos makes the bulk of the money. With enough coffee, I can keep thinking outside the proverbial rectangle.

As a side note, Greta just released her latest book on climate change after talking to experts.

The mature adult Greta just got into a pissing contest with Andrew Tate. Pffft. I wonder why there are nukes in the world; I just can’t figure it out. SMH

The media will make Greta rich by hyping spooky stories about the sky falling. Her biased opinion invalidates any science she purports to consider relevant. They will make her rich because they like to push negative stories like Climate change to control the narrative. Chicken Little and Greta have lots in common. Too bad she never read the children’s book. Had she studied science from an unbiased source, not the IPCC, she might have tempered her scowl.

I think you will find my work of fiction much more entertaining than hers. Scientists will probably find my theories closer to the facts than charts and graphs based on screwed-up data.

We lose 90 tons of atmosphere every day thanks to the cosmic wind. That atmosphere contains thousands of gallons of water. Could the droughts, dried-up rivers, and even our Grand Canyon that look like the canals on Mars be signs of things to come? Could those spires of land poking out of lakes and different oceans be a precursor to the fact that we are losing water and not going to have sea level rise?

Do you really believe the White Cliffs of Dover rose from the depths of the abyss? Do you really think that the Grand Canyon pushed up from somewhere below?

Read my novel.

-Best

Scott

Earth’s Last Hope and/or The Hills We Climb

Film at 11

Don’t you hate clickbait?

Admittedly one would have to be willfully stupid to fall for the antics of the ratings-craving media. If you put Trump in the title, the haters will click to see who is suing him now. The MAGA crowd will click to hate on the haters. It’s a win-win.

An article in the news today is about the Earth’s core that has stopped spinning. Top scientists agree that it has stopped. And…

Here is the pitch…I wrote a book called Earth’s Last Hope…Follow the link.https://www.amazon.com/stores/Scott-Taylor/author/B0BQCX3SRH

In my humble opinion, we have it all wrong. Scaring the shit out of people to change their behavior is how they control the masses. Film at 11.

Tectonic plate movement pushed the land together, causing it to buckle and rise out of the slime. There is also land that is now high and dry, caused by water loss due to the cosmic wind. The inconvenient truth that is making Gore a billionaire is a damned lie.

If you want to know the fate of the Earth, take a look at Mars. Yes, folks, that’s the future of the planet, no matter how much carbon dioxide you fart.

Unlike the x bartender, self-acclaimed climate expert, AOC, or the infamous Greta watch me scowl thorn in the butt berg, they are willfully stupid.

Allow me to elucidate.

Once upon a time, the Earth had much more water than now. Not just two thousand years ago when Jesus was doing his thing, or when Noah was searching the hardware stores for gopher wood, but a long time ago. We are talking about little land being above the water line so long ago.

I get a kick out of the flood story in the bible. Where did the water go?

Listen up. I believe that I know.

There is this thing known as the cosmic wind. Yes, wind, but not the kind that blows your hair around.

We lose 90 tons of atmosphere every day.

“WHAT?!” That (?!) is an Interrobang, btw. Save the interrobang… 😊

Yes, (90) ninety tons of atmosphere is blown into the vacuum of space every day. I suspect the water levels will continue to recede, and the climate might warm up because there is less ice. The ice melts and fills the oceans, but the weather will change as the ice melts, and there is less of it.

Again if you want a preview of what is to come, look at Mars.

If you don’t believe me, think again.

Greta, listen up. Fifty-odd years before Galileo studied the heavens with a telescope, a guy named Copernicus determined that the planets revolved around the Sun. The church was not happy with him or Galileo.

This is important, Greta. Pay attention.

Let’s admit that religion gets in the way of the facts without throwing this whole post into a rant on religion vs. science. If God has a language, I think it would be math. That is just my opinion.

Now to the meat of the issue. Why is the Earth headed the way of Mars?

If you study the Sun, you must have at least wondered what fuels that big ball of light.

Without the math, which you wouldn’t look at anyway, the Sun burns, uses up, 5 million tons of its fuel every second. Go back and read that sentence again.

Why is that important?

Back to Newton and Copernicus, the Earth is falling. Each body in orbit around the Sun is falling. When you add in velocity, you have an orbit.

Our moon is falling, as are the space station and all those satellites up there. Along with the space junk, it is all falling. When the space junk slows down, it loses its orbit or decays, and then we have to worry if the sky is falling.

The Earth has a velocity of about half a million miles an hour. In my book, ‘Earths Last Hope, our alien friends capture Venus and tug it into a higher orbit by increasing its velocity.

Back to the Sun. If the mass of the Sun is decreasing by 5 million tons a second, sooner or later the orbits of the bodies that are falling will do what?

If you said they move into higher orbits, you are a star. Well, not a star like the Sun, but you get a proverbial gold star.

If a body such as the Earth, which is more or less in the goldilocks zone, goes into a higher orbit, what do you think will happen to the climate?

Take your time; I can wait.

On a cold night, when you back your butt up to the fireplace to warm yourself, you might notice that the further away from the fire you get, the cooler it gets.

As the Sun loses mass, the orbits of all the planets will change and move outward. Venus one day might be where humanity ends up. I hope we stop killing each other and grow up so we can tackle the tough questions and not ‘he who dies with the most money wins.’

The climate will get cooler as we move further away from our star. Since the process is so slow, you will never see it. I would wager that Mars was once much closer to the Sun, as were the rest of the planets.

If Al who didn’t invent the internet, Gore really gave a shit about the climate, he would not be flying his private jet around the globe. Scaring the shit out of you is his ‘film at 11’ moment. (that is the absolute inconvenient truth.)

You can read my book. It is a page-turner. I might have other thoughts on Mars in the book…spoiler alert…

-Best

Why Write…New Release

Why Write,

As I publish my latest novel, ‘Earth’s Last Hope’ people ask me, why?

That’s a head-scratcher.

I will couch this next paragraph with blunt honesty. Everyone thinks that they can write.

While you might have made it through high school English and college, that doesn’t mean you can write. It’s not impossible, but it takes practice. It takes more than just practice. It takes passion.

When I think back on all the hours I spent learning to paint or play the guitar, the passion drove me.

“Why?” That is the question that drove me.

Since I began my writing career, I have written over forty-five million words. Yes, that’s quantified.

Much like my early painting, I cringe when I look backward at my previous works.

‘That is how it should be.’

Some predators thought they could write. Since these predators can’t, they pose as SMEs in a facet of writing.

I know of nobody that doesn’t think their first novel isn’t going to be a New York Times Best Seller.

Reality is a sucky thing, but don’t stop dreaming. Dream big. Be real… Get beta readers that you trust.

These posers know that if you spend time writing a novel, you are so involved that you will spend money to make it big. While they laugh all the way to the bank, your hopes are what you got for your money.

I get that same ‘feeling’ when I purchase a lottery ticket. My dollars’ worth of entertainment is this. “What will I do with all that money when I win?”

Friends, that is the only reason to spend that dollar. If you paid attention in your statistics class, you understand that the house always wins. Stay out of gambling joints unless you have money to piss away.

Yes, I go to Vegas but have an ‘oh shit budget.’ The key is to realize that the ATM is not a slot machine.

When those wheels don’t end where I wanted,” Well, Shit.”

When the house wins….”Well, shit.”

Vegas is an atmosphere for entertainment. Not a retirement strategy.

Writing novels is not a retirement strategy; it is entertainment. Firstly, it is entertainment for the author. Secondly, it is a stepping stone toward being better at your craft. Thirdly and lastly, it is entertainment for your audience.

With those few words of wisdom, let me expound on my latest novel.

Earth’s last hope, in short, is this… Hope.

In this novel, I kill off 8 billion folks and destroy the planet, and …the story has a happy ending.

Please don’t spoil it for yourself and read the last chapter first; it won’t make sense.

For you writers, the characters had negative and positive arcs. The story has negative and positive arcs.

For you readers, it’s a page-turner.

The story is light sci-fi, a thriller, and a romance with a strong female lead.

I hope you read my book, give me feedback and if you like it, please go to the place you purchased it and leave a review.

Over a million books are put into the marketplace every year. Trust me, few of those books are worth the time to read.

The Star People is the backstory of the main character. I published a version of it in our league’s Anthology to whet the appetite of readers like yourself. In Earth’s Last Hope, those few chapters are included but modified to go along with the rating and theme of the book.

Some names changed, as did the rating. MA 14.

Thanks for reading the blog and for following me.

Follow me if you are interested in writing. I pick different topics and expound on them, cutting through the BS. Just free info from me to you.

Much Love -Scott

Earth’s Last Hope

Toxic Twitter

Around 1982 I ran a BBS. For those who were not into computers (or alive), in 1982, it was an age when personal computers became affordable. They were still damned expensive. If you were to adjust for inflation, the cost of a PC back then would be equivalent to $15K today.

Bill Gates had just bought DOS from a fellow in Seattle for five thousand dollars, repackaged it, and leased it to IBM.

A BBS hosted at home meant a dedicated phone line, a UPS, and other hardware and software. A BBS was a hefty investment.

Water seeks the lowest level; if you sleep with the dogs, you wake up with fleas. Two cliches apply to my efforts to spend this kind of money and time.

The idea of the BBS was a place to exchange technical ideas with other like-minded folks.

It wasn’t long into the process when the first pornography was uploaded to my rather expensive hobby. I suppose Cheryl Tiegs disappearing one piece is mild in comparison, but it was pretty surprising. Someone bothered to take the time to photoshop her picture from SI, make it a GIF, and upload it. Of course, it went viral, and I imagine that even today, you can locate it floating around on the internet.

It must have made an impression; that was forty years ago.

The BBS came down when someone uploaded porn that was more graphic and certainly nauseating. The fleas were rampant. I wanted nothing to do with depravity which some people found amusing.

Fast forward forty-odd years.

I get these messages in the e-mail from Twitter that tells me they miss me.

As an author, social media is essential. Telling people about my latest book release and getting them interested is a perfect application of the media.

I am in the finishing stages of writing a novel called Earth’s Last Hope. As an adjunct to this process, I went back on Twitter last evening to see if my accounts still worked, and so on.

To my shock and horror, what I found in a matter of minutes made a nude Cheryl appear godly.

Without the gory detail, I saw a man hanging from a bridge. It was real. I witnessed animal cruelty which I find reprehensible, and then I saw a video of an execution. Yes, folks, Twitter suggested it “for you,” and there it was. A man was killed with a backhoe.

There were other less shocking things.

The point I am making is this. Those kinds of videos will screw some folks up. You cannot unsee an execution.

There was another execution by a cop. The cop shot the man several times. The video showed him drawing up into the fetal position before he expired.

You cannot unsee this stuff.

This post is about mental health. We wonder why kids of a young age shoot their teachers or parents and blame guns. It is easy to blame something that you can’t control. It is much more difficult to glance at the mirror and think that you might be part of the problem.

We see teenagers do violent things with each other and wonder why. Could we be the role models that they are following?

I know a company pays people to scrub the internet of such stuff. I know folks who work for this company. Could it be that they have an axe to grind against Musk, so they are allowing this kind of crap to stay visible?

Back in school, we were thrilled to see a projector in the classroom after lunch. That meant a movie. Hmmm, we were shown the film ‘The Execution of Private Slovak. Why?

What compelled the teacher to think this was an appropriate film for kids?

All these years later, I remember the film vividly. I remember them telling the soldiers who would be firing the bullets into this man, where the heart was, and so on.

Vietnam was still going on, thanks to LBJ. The draft was still in vogue, and I suspect that since we were close to that age to be ‘conscripted,’ the film might be shown to keep us from fleeing to Canada. That’s a guess.

My point is the film was disturbing. Much like the things we see in these Tik Tok videos, much of it is disturbing to the core.

Garbage in, Garbage out is something I believe strongly. I am all for free speech. I think that age-appropriate free speech, much like age-appropriate situations, is necessary. How are young minds supposed to interpret things like snuff films? Now, if you add to the mix actual executions not made in Hollywood, how do they process something so grotesque?

Twitter, in its current form, is not safe for minors. I don’t want that stuff in my head, and I know how to process it.

Twitter should have a safe filter, much like Google’s safe search.

-Best

Don’t use the condiments

On a local social networking site, a person sounded off about some child drinking from the chocolate syrup bottle at the local BBQ joint. She corrected the child and told management what had happened. The girl behind the counter tossed the syrup. When the boy told his father, he glanced at the woman, waved, and left the establishment.

The thread went on with many weighing in.

Since my thoughts are more verbose than intended, I thought I would put this on my blog instead.

It starts with the parents. It might be more profound than that. Kids are being raised by video games and what used to be Hollywood.

The economy is such that usually, both parents must work. Your children are not raised by ‘Father knows Best, or Leave it to Beaver.’ If they are in a single-parent home, that lack of good behavior goes double. Where do they then learn what is socially acceptable?

I am a writer. Often my characters bump into today’s value system. It has been incumbent upon me to learn where these kids get their values. It was not an exhaustive search. After looking at some of the games they play, examining the amount of unsupervised time they have, and the educational system tolerating bad behavior, I had my answers.

Not long ago, I was in the food court close to some teenagers who were lamenting about their home lives. These were kids wearing designer clothing. They each had a smartphone, some had braces, and they went on about how crappy their parents were. I had to leave.

Speaking with children of different generations, I notice a variance in what they think is acceptable behavior. It is rather shocking.

Today’s 30-somethings that I speak with are clueless. At their age, they should be saving for retirement. Instead, they rent an apartment equivalent to the house they grew up in. They attempt to live as if they were still under their parent’s roof and eat out as if it were free. Many parents enable this behavior by supplementing their income. Their kids live paycheck to paycheck, usually running a deficit by the end of the month. Much like that college loan, they also have credit card debt. Why? They were never taught to manage money.

Instead of attempting to do it for themselves, they complain about how crappy life is and, yes, spend their free time on the computer playing video games. It is no small wonder they cannot afford their student loans.

The gaming industry is $188 Billion. Proponents of video games will argue against what I am telling you. Still, from Sandy Hook to many other mass shooting events, most of those shooters had one thing in common. Can you guess?

One of the officers investigating Sandy Hook told the press that the kid was ‘very proficient’ at killing that many people. It was almost as if he were trained in the military. Huh…

The Parkland Shooter was part of a unique program where his misdeeds (criminal) were kept secret from the School to avoid the school pipeline to prison. The argument for this program is that kids will grow out of it. One trip to the south side of Chicago will change the mind of most. The FBI knew about the shooter’s violent proclivities and were even warned before the shooting. They did nothing. I am still amazed that the activist David Hogg has yet to figure it out.

A teacher in California was beaten by a student because ‘she gave him a failing grade.’ The school system tried to convince the teacher (while she was still in hospital) not to press charges. If memory serves, he broke her jaw, among other things. It would ruin the boy’s life if you pressed charges. I wonder where that ‘child’ is now?

Playing video games releases endorphins which make the player feel good. The hormones and chemicals released are addicting. We humans can be addicted to almost anything, even pain. Does that fact shed some light on why some self-harm?

Those game players reading this will likely chime in, telling me I am wrong. Truth is, I am not mistaken. If you were to honestly log the amount of time you spend playing games, you might be surprised. How does it make you feel to win or take that hill? How do you feel when you lose? When confronted with the truth, how does that make you feel? How does that make you feel if you are a sniper and kill the ‘enemy? No, I am not wrong.

Can you guess why Syrup Boy was drinking the syrup? Sure, it tasted good, but what else? Yes, chocolate is addicting, as is anything that makes you ‘feel’ good. That little feature of most animals is for the survival of the species. I don’t need to spell that out for most of you.

Those proponents of video games immediately tried to spin things differently, but…If you live in a world full of violence, day in and day out, guess what happens to your psychic? Where did this Sandy Hook killer learn to be so proficient? He blew one of the teacher’s heads off and was heard laughing about it after the fact. One wonders why. Was it what he expected?

Were you aware that you could get PTSD from video games? Now we have VR (virtual reality), which will most certainly make the game more real or immersive. Are we even looking into cause and effect? No, it’s the guns doing it.

It is almost as if we should have a consumer protection agency or something looking into cause and effect. What happens if?

There is a real danger among us; syrup boy is just one minor symptom that we are doing something wrong. The prison population is a vast indicator we are doing something very wrong. PFFT

Cause and effect, garbage in, garbage out. Why has nobody put this together? Is it that unpopular? Can we not handle the truth? Are we not paying anyone to look into such things?

Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, it will all be ok.

I mention the $188 Billion gaming industry because they hire PR firms to spin events like some mass shooting in another direction, away from the obvious. IT’S THE GUNS!!!

Guns are an easy emotional target or trigger word. That is why gaming lobbyists push the gun narrative. They know what it is, but $188 billion pays for PR firms and lobbyists and buys congressmen. It also makes the 2cnd amendment and the NRA the enemies of the people. If they can tie it to a political party, that is just a bonus.

Mental illness is rife. Covid, the lockdowns, and much more play into what is happening. With the lockdowns, the youth have more time to immerse themselves in these games. During the lockdown, the youth were not as socially active as they might have been. Games are an alternate reality. One wonders where reality and games collide. Add drugs into the mix, and that line will get super blurry.

Uvalde; his grandfather was a drug dealer, his mother a junkie, and you know grandma was not innocent or clueless about where the money came from. Pot today has a THC content of up to 95%. In the ’70s, the THC content was about 5%. The effects on the brain are mind-numbing and can cause uncontrollable rage. A toxicology report is still pending on the Uvalde shooter.

Riddle me this, why did the City of Carrollton, Texas, spend tax dollars on creating an E-sports (gaming facility for kids to play video games?) Wouldn’t it be better for kids to play these around their parents? Is this a taxpayer-funded babysitter or surrogate guardian who would also drink from the syrup bottle? Is it for kids who can’t afford a gaming computer?

In truth, I am uncertain what this facility is. On the surface, it sounds like a taxpayer-funded Dave and Busters, only for video games, period. Shouldn’t we try to get kids away from the keyboard and outside playing sports?

I am glad that the kid that shot up the July 4^th celebration was such a coward that he gave up without committing suicide by cop. We need to learn what motivated him and everything else we can. He, like others, will end up being a statistic, but nevertheless, information is valuable.

Where did he learn to be a sniper? He must have known about ballistics to shoot that distance and hit the target. Where did he learn?

Many people claim that School is a pipeline to prison. They blame it on things that are far from the facts. To quote Jack Nicholson, ‘They can’t handle the truth.’ In School, you learn the basics to get by in life and are introduced to social mores.

When I went to School, if your shirt was not tucked in correctly and you were caught, you earned a swat. For the rest of that day, every time you sat, there was this stinging reminder to make sure your shirt was properly tucked in.

Some parents argue against such things. They doth protest. Their argument is that you are teaching kids to hit; I disagree. You are teaching them that we have rules. While you are here, you will follow them. Trust me, parents, kids know how to hit already.

If you have flown, there are more rules than I care to count. Do not joke with the TSA.

In society, there are rules. You and I have those same rules. We get hit in the pocketbook if we speed or drive erratically. If you have one of your tires over the line in a handicapped parking area, the fine is over $600. I am talking about accidentally crossing that little white line with one tire.

One lady had just picked her kid up from school. She was on her phone while speeding through the school zone. The motorcycle cop had his lights on. He tried to get her attention for over a mile before he was forced to go up to her window at a red light and tap on it. I hope her child watched that interaction.

She was terribly distracted by the conversation on the phone. Speeding through a school zone is a hefty ticket. On your phone, while driving in a school zone is yet another. Not seeing the cop for at least a mile…Those mistakes will be quite the spanking.

My point is that there are rules; when do we start teaching them to our kids? There are social mores that are also incumbent upon us to teach. We don’t drink from the bottle. We cannot be our children’s friends. We must be parents first; that is our job. We are not talking about child abuse or beating anyone; we are talking about course corrections. We are talking about parenting. Know what your child is doing. We parents are held accountable for their actions until they reach adulthood. Our job is to raise them so that the criminal justice system does not have to.

Some scream about prison overpopulation. We, the parents, are in part the cause of this. The lack of morality and, yes, the violence are symptoms of not being engaged with your progeny.

Dysfunctional families are endemic to the problem, and that is what congress should be addressing. Breaking the cycle of single-parent homes requires education.

Drugs and the promise of easy money probably eclipse poor parenting, as even the best of parents end up burying a child due to an overdose. Some lose them to gang violence. That, of course, is systemic of drugs and the drug culture.

It starts at home. You are the person they will model until such a time they attempt to emulate some actor or actress. If you teach them correctly and raise them right, you will not need to worry about what the schools are doing to indoctrinate them into this woke world of weirdness. You might also keep them from hanging with the wrong crowd.

Anyone who teaches your kids to hate their country must be in a different vocation. Any person who grooms your young child must be behind bars for pedophilia. The messages children get today are mind-bending. Homeschooling is almost a must.

Your options are clear. Either be of good moral character and lead by example or teach them how to look innocent in a lineup.

-Best

Retirement or just the next phase?

I hit that magic age where no employer wants to commit to a real honest-to-goodness job. That’s ok; I knew it was coming, most of my friends are older, and I have watched this phenomenon play out year after year.

There have been unexpected occurrences starting in 2020.

Before Covid was a thing, I managed to catch it from a masseuse. She was from China and spoke little to no English, not that it mattered. This was not my first time in this business. While there was a language barrier, she managed to know where it hurt and was able to manipulate the fascia or what have you in such a way to stop the muscle spasms.

It was 68 degrees in the room, and she was sweating profusely. I remember thinking, she must be working hard. I better tip her extra.

Three days later, I was in my doctor’s office with a sore throat, breathing issues, and a fever. At this stage of the game, the virus was not transmissible from humans to humans. It was not airborne and was only in Wuhan near the wet market.

We were assured by the CDC and the WHO not to worry. Pelosi was taking photo ops in China town along with its population, and the head of the health department in NYC was among the Chinese folks in NY, telling the world it was safe to go amongst them and…enjoy Chinese New Year’s Celebrations.

Words Matter and they all lied to us. While they might have given a get out of jail free card to Big Pharma, those that lied to us should be held accountable. They knew they were lying.

Backing up in history, about 30 years, I was in a head-on collision with an 84-year-old man who was drunk. I wrote the story as a memoir for the Anthology my writer’s group put together.

I wrote it as a cautionary tale. I will put a link to the Anthology for those of you interested in such stories. My story is the very last one in the book. The Roads We Take

That fateful day changed my life. I was forced to re-invent myself. The impact had a combined velocity of 110 mph.

There is a reason football players make the big bucks. The abuse they put their bodies through has a cumulative effect, and they will pay for it later in life. Much like every injury, broken arm, or leg you might have had will cause a twinge of pain during a weather change, imagine your entire skeleton as if it were on fire.

No, there were no grand settlements. One of my lawyer friends told me he could make me a rich man. The persons who were culpable had the same insurance company. They would not have paid the price for what she enabled, and he did. He was obviously well known in that town, the cop protected him, only wrote him up for left of center.

I heard the argument between him and his wife. There was only a thin curtain that separated the two of us. “You promised me that you would not drink and drive if I got you that new car!”

“Well, we were out of beer and it was halftime. I was just going to Kroger.”

Pffft! Every day, over thirty years later I pay for his lack of judgment and her enabling him. I am certainly not alone.

Life goes on; you do the best you can. Hence the massages and chiropractors and the occasional doctor who remarks while looking at the x-rays…’I would hate to be in your body.’

It could be worse; I know it, so I press on. Hence retirement.

Many, too many, in fact, have given up. They have taken the government up on whatever entitlements they can get and just survive.

It is always a red flag to me when I speak with a friend, and they ask have I seen this or that on TV?

I don’t watch TV. I know how that sounds, but to me, it is noise. Those that you see on the screen cannot relate to you or me for the most part.

If it were not for writers, many would be as vapid as the force that makes balloons rise, hot air. Don’t believe me, find some on Twitter and read the garbage that they spew. From their ivory towers and gated communities, they scream, “let them eat cake.” ‘Cake was a metaphor for the scraps that fell off the table that the dogs got.’

With few exceptions, there are not many I would like to meet. Introduce me to the writers; those are the geniuses.

You might have guessed by now that I had to re-invent myself once again.

I went from an engineer to computer support to the management of teams of folks working in the IT field. Back when I started, it was Data Processing, that tells you a little.

Today I am winding down my company www.timedok.com. The company serves many but mainly takes care of municipalities. All good things must end. The machines I sell and service are used less and less. The pandemic has expedited the process. The supply chain failure by this administration have not helped.

Currently, I am in the middle of writing a science fiction novel which you will hear more about if you follow me.

Why not just retire, you might ask?

One of the most repeated failures by retirees is they don’t plan for what they will do after the job. I cannot speak for women, but as a man, I can tell you that most of us identify with what we do for a living. Most of us take pride in what we do, and we do the best we can.

Suddenly you find your pay has reached some magical number that a bean counter has decided is too much. Around your company’s fiscal year end, your boss is given his budget. He or she is forced to let someone go to raise your salary or find someone less expensive than you, and keep as many employees as he or she can.

Usually, that happens long before you reach retirement age. Then what?

I started this blog at a certain age nobody wants you. It is not because of age discrimination per se but they know you were probably making a salary that would exceed what they could or are willing to afford. The application, which is a legal document, most of the time asked what your salary was.

If you didn’t plan for retirement both financially and with an idea of how you will occupy your time, what do you do?

The house you paid for undoubtedly you will find yourself taxed out of.

Thanks to the failures of the government of California, my taxes have exceeded what the original house payment was, and there are no signs of the taxes going down. In fact, if I were attempting to live off social security, the taxes would take most of it.

Why California? There seems to be a mass exodus from the west, because of the cost of living and taxes. Those from the West who voted for the policies which have destroyed their state are heading East. They most probably will not have figured out that their ideology, and the way they vote is why they are having to find jobs back East.

Government is good at taking what’s not theirs. It becomes easy to understand why there are those who learn how to take advantage of the system and live on whatever handouts they can get, including housing.

It is a form of socialism but shhh, the right is not aware of it yet. They still think if Bernie is not in office, we are fine.

The re-invention of myself is nothing unique. I see retired people in the hardware store earning whatever the government will allow them to earn without subtracting that amount from their (entitlements.) I was offered such a job not long ago. I chuckled at that offer and left with my purchases to play plumber at my home.

With this book I am working on, do I expect it to make me millions? No, I am, in fact, a realist. One of the largest issues with getting published today is that everyone thinks they can write.

These people range from school-age kids to retired people who have a story to tell. Once they create their tomb, they send it off to agents, where it sits in what is known as a slush pile.

The slush pile of want to be authors sits for days, weeks, or months until either they have time to sift through it or they hire their teenage child to sift through the thousands of entries, while he or she plays games on their phone.

No, I don’t expect the weeks to months I have invested in this project to make me rich. This project, much like learning to 3d print, or teaching myself python, is simply a transitionary device from working to retirement. Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning, or they die.

You can be old and have a terminal illness, and still have a quality of life while you are sucking in air. Don’t waste it.

If you want to understand why writing isn’t a get-rich scheme, look no further than Kindle Unlimited. Ten dollars a month to Jeff Bezos and read all you want. That book that you might have spent a year of your life creating is basically free to anyone that subscribes to KU.

Unlike those books in Barns and Noble that sell for real dollars, e-books are worthless. Services like his and others have programmed the reading public to believe that your efforts should be free to them.

I know of an author who spent 35 years creating one novel. No, I don’t think writing a book is a get-rich scheme unless you are a tv personality and can hype your book multiple times a day.

Writing the perfect novel, is only a small part of the puzzle. In the future we will be examining what those other parts might be, and how to pull them off without an agent.

Make sure you hit that follow button.

-Best

The Ubiquitous #Query Letter @badlitagent

(The following is a satirical expression of frustration with the egocentric gatekeepers of the publishing world.)

I am not picking on you @badlitagent, I like your snark.

There are many out there who claim to “know the secret” of how to write the “perfect” query letter.

If you just follow, their simple steps, agents, and publishers alike will seek your manuscript!

“Who believes that?”

I am a writer, I write! When I am writing, I am lost in the story. The characters take on lives of their own and demand that I faithfully capture their personalities and character traits, as well as their actions. The story must be cohesive, that is where I live.

When you find yourself spending more time researching each agent, constructing a query letter, creating a synopsis per their idea of what that is, and first few pages in whatever format that desire, something is wrong.

The actual hell of it is, you are not, repeat not, trying to catch the agent’s attention. They are too wrapped up in their position of power, to bother to read your query letter, much less respond to them. No, they have interns that may be going to college or maybe in high school. Hell, they might have their twelve-year-olds reading them.

(Looking for interns)

“If you like to read certain books that we represent, we will hire you as an intern. You must be able to “read” several query letters, and write a report on each in one sentence or less.”

When researching the agent, this is typical.

“If we don’t respond in eight weeks, consider it a pass.”

How fucking lousy is that! You spend hours crafting the perfect Query letter, and the agent does not have time to respond with a simple form reply..!?

“I want some fucking feedback! Why? What about this letter, or this manuscript, turned you off on the project. What was missing? What one thing if it had would make you excited?”

Some will send you the form letter “Your story is not the kind of material we represent.” Please please please continue to bang your head against the wall though; we like to hear the banging, as it keeps us awake!
(It is what you represent, because I researched your damned site, and your bio, and who you have published thus far, so either you did not read it, or your intern cannot read!)

Here is what I think they mean to say. Allow me to translate this for you.

“If you have a proven track record of selling millions of books, we might consider looking at your manuscript. If you were on the New York Times bestseller list, let us know that too, so we can ask the intern to read more than the title of what you send. We only have time to spend on sure bets. If you are not a famous author, please, do not bother us! I know we say that we are looking for first time authors but we all say that, don’t we? Whatever you have written, it is trash unless we can sell at least a million copies of it, without investing any money or time on it what so ever. As the matter of fact; if you can sell a million copies on your own, just send us 30% and we might be persuaded to have the senior intern look at your next project.”

“If you still want to send us a query letter, use one syllable words so our interns who are either stoned or still in pre-K can understand them. Thanks for your understanding now, go fuck off! And, have a nice day!”

My advice…

You cannot be a one trick pony.

You must have more than one novel in you. Get published in as many places as you can. Whether that be newsletters, magazines, short stories and unfortunately self-publish something. Consider it a giveaway because there is little to no protection for intellectual property rights once you put it on the Internet. There are programs out there that can take Kindle or other types of e-books and turn them into PDF’s so they can be “shared.”

Many write short stories and give them away just to get their “brand” out there.

Truthfully we have no idea what the intern is looking for; it could be word count, Genre, style of writing or eloquent phrases or pixie dust. Since their website does not give us any information on where they went to school or what they like to read, it is a crap shoot!

The bottom line as I see it, you must “be someone” already, to get their attention.

Your thoughts are always interesting to me, feel free to elucidate on your experiences.

Maybe you have an agent that reads his or her own query letters? Tell us about that.

Remember that most of this is satire, with some frustration mixed in.

-Best

Pioneer deceleration problem, My take. #space #time

In 1992, we launched Pioneer 10, which is leaving the solar system. As it reaches further away from the sun, it has begun to decelerate.

Scientists believe to have discovered the solution. They are proposing that particles leaving the spacecraft as heat are pushing against the forward momentum of the craft slowing it.

“I beg to differ.”

Using the good old formula F=MA, that simply does not seem to add up.

I read about this anomaly years ago and have noodled the issue for, well years.

Time is not a constant.

We here on earth think of time as purely a linear progression that we measure with clocks, watches, and calendars.

For years we have all seen the model of the solar system on a green grid with the sun, planets and other bodies all warping the fabric of space as they “fall” in their respective orbits.

Picture the solar system not on a horizontal plane but inside a bubble. Maybe it is an oblong bubble and not a perfect sphere but a bubble never the less.

Now picture the other things inside that solar system in their respective bubbles, each creating a bubble that is respective of its mass.

That bubble is warped space. Its intensity of warpage is directly proportional to the amount of gravity.

When we see these huge storms on the sun that go on for days, or the Magellanic Clouds that seem to be frozen in time, this is our first clue that time is not a constant.

If we could build a craft that could tolerate the heat of the sun and orbit it much closer to the sun, I also suspect that the storms on the sun would happen at an accelerated rate. That craft would be in a different “local time.”

1dbd_flux_capacitor_car_charger — Pick this handy little gadget up at Think Geek!

Much like traveling through the country we pass time zones and date zones. If you hopped in your faster than lightspeed spaceship with your version of the flux capacitor and left to see the Horsehead Nebula, when you got there, it would not be there.

Leaving your “local time” heading outside of the solar system would put you into another time zone. Instead of being based on some ancient 60 seconds to the minute, the next “bubble might be 75 seconds to the minute.”

Traveling between the Bubbles in that area of empty space, where gravity does not play a role might very well find you traversing the distance in “no time,” as there is nothing there to create the bubble!

Pioneer 10 and 11 are slowing because they are reaching the end of this bubble and entering into another local time. Once outside the bubble of the Milky Way, I suspect it will speed up significantly.

Where the demarcation point of that bubble is, is truly a mystery.

This postulation can be proved or disproved with a simple test.

As the spacecraft get further away, does the bit rate of the telemetry change at all, even in the slightest?

The bit rate should not change with distance, only time!

I am a science fiction writer. I don’t pretend to understand the books of math that these scientists do. Because I don’t constrain my thought process to what I can find a formula for, I can think outside the box.

The postulations no matter how preposterous they may seem to the scientific community, I claim them as mine and hold that copyright.

They may very well find themselves in one of my next novels which is possibly the only place that they belong.

-Best