On-line friend of mine, name of Erin Smith has a fantastic analytical mind, and has been studying various notable events, breaking them down into bite-sized pieces.
Because Erin is, well, Erin, she’s currently in Ukraine, studying and analyzing the current “notable event” currently on-going there.
Her substack is: Contextual Insurgent Project, and I’d appreciate it if y’all would pop by, read, ponder, and let her know she’s doing good.
Thank you,
LawDog
In lieu of content, have some foxes.
LawDog
Cedar Sanderson, inspired (I think) by a comment made by Dorothy Grant gently asked me if I would give her a story for an anthology about PTSD. She further added that the anthology was to be about Hope, and would be about explaining PTSD to those who don’t have it, but live with folks who do.
This is a fairly high-stress time for me, and some PTSD issues I didn’t realize that I had may be popping up every now and then, but I said I would try.
And I did. I really did, but every time I tried, I’d get about a paragraph in and the story would be crap. Complete trite garbage. And I would do something that I never do — and that is to delete the entire thing.
I honestly thought I’d have to bail on this one, but a couple of days past the deadline, I sat down at The Blanket Fort, jammed earplugs in, and just … wrote.
When I write, I do what I call “storyboarding”. I divide my story into acts, and for each act I have a mental picture, a brief description, and — most importantly — a sentence from the act.
I didn’t do this. I imagined a terrible scene, and then just pounded the keyboard until it was done; and when it was done, I attached it to an email, and sent it to Cedar along with a note that, “If it needs editing, you’ll have to do it.”
I haven’t read it since, and I probably won’t.
The result was “Memories, Like Dust”, and it is the story of a man clinging to his sanity by the skin of his teeth.
It is the very last story in the anthology “Can’t Go Home Again“, and is the least of a set of stories designed around the concept that there is hope; that there is way back to Normal.
If you know someone with PTSD, please buy this book. It was written with a two-fold purpose. One, to show people who don’t have PTSD what it is like; and two, to show those people who do have it that there is Hope. That they’re not alone. That there is a way back to something approaching normalcy.
This isn’t about money, this is about a labour of love, and a sincere attempt to help those folks who don’t get nearly enough help as it is.
Most of the authors are donating their royalties to PTSD support groups, that how much we believe in this book.
Again: please consider buying this book, and if you can’t, would you consider spreading the word about it?
Thank you,
LawDog
EDIT: I’ve had some people contact me, and tell me they couldn’t read “Can’t Go Home”. That is perfectly understandable, and I don’t blame y’all a bit. I haven’t read it, and probably won’t.
However, might I ask a favour? If you have a dead-tree copy, and find that you can’t read it, would you consider donating it to a PTSD support group?
Thank you.
LawDog
During my recent melancholy state, a Facebook friend asked a fairly innocuous question, to wit:
“If Germany had done the Intelligent Thing, and sent the force which invaded Crete to Malta instead, where would the best landing sites be?”
This kind of kicked me in the slats, and I took off on a (probably excruciating) long-winded exposition regarding how bad of an idea that would have been, with a throw-away line in the middle that went like this:
So, perched on a wall over looking the Old City in Valletta are several translucent figures. Around a corner comes an ethereal shape of a Barbary pirate carrying a huge bowl of popcorn. “Did I miss it?” He gasps, sliding to a stop.
“Naw,” grunts a Phoenician mercenary, scratching irritably at his beard, “They’re still doing the boiling oil and red hot sand.”
The assembled figures watch as the grey-clad invaders fight their way into a narrow alley, away from the Medieval murder holes conveniently built 500 years prior in the apartments overlooking the narrow street.
There is a silence, as dozens of bags, none weighing more than a pound, arc off the flat roofs distant above the stone floor of the alley.
“Oooo,” choruses the group, as clouds of fine white dust billow up, and carried by the breeze channeled by the alley, drift over the German paratroopers.
Then the screaming starts.
In front of the ghosts, another figure, this one clad in the latest 1940s military kit, fades into view. A figure in a turban bounces off the parapet, produces a scroll and a bone pen, “When the powdered quicklime hit, did your eyes burn first, or was it your lungs?”
The German paratrooper stares wildly at the Ottoman, “What the [deleted]? What the [deleted]?”
“Don’t know what to tell you,” grunts the shade of a Roman centurion, “He’s an alchemist. Popcorn?”
The offer is refused, and the Roman shrugs, and tosses some into his mouth, “I really, really,” he chews firmly, “Hate this [deleted]ing island.”
Well, this apparently took firm hold of several people’s imaginations, and folks started writing stuff about Malta. Other folks started demanding an anthology, and ended up with Jonna Hayden (who has moved to Bugscuffle) taking me to lunch, and daring me to put one together.
Mostly to humour her and Herself, I asked on Facebook and MeWe if there were any interest in writing stories for a anthology about Malta; actually expecting to get between four and six stories; which would allow me to smile gently, opine that I had tried, and bin this idea.
Holy. Gods.
When I checked the submission email address, what was in there, plus the stories being finished up …
… came to about twenty of them. And they were all good.
So, after I got done hyperventilating, I had a talk with the folks helping me put this together, and we’re going to launch the first Malta Anthology in April.
And the second Malta anthology will be launched in the fall. Maybe.
Speaking of, if you’re a writer, and you have a short story (between 5,000 and 8,000 words) involving Malta, send it to:
anthology(dot)malta<at>gmail{dot}com
So far, I’ve got twelve different covers that I need to choose from.
Damn.
Work, work, work.
LawDog
Well, the issues preventing me from blogging looks like they’re going to persist until August of 2022 — quite a bit longer than I had thought they would.
Sigh.
I have been advised — yes these issues require advice, and rather expensive advice I might add — that I can blog as long as I keep to “non-controversial topics”, with “non-controversial” being somewhat undefined at this time.
So, time to flog some work.
As some of you may have noticed, The LawDog Files ebooks and dead-tree editions are off Amazon. This is because my rights have reverted to me, and I’m in the middle of redoing those books. Sarah Hoyt’s Inkstained Press will be carrying the ebook version when I get it re-done; and I will be self-publishing the physical books via my own Raconteur Press.
Sarah assures me that she will get three books out of me — we’ll see.
In the meantime, I have been a little bit busy.
Cedar Sanderson, who is a fantastic and talented artist, as well as author in her own right, took some Facebook posts I made during a particularly melancholy period here recently and turned them into a colouring book:
Taskforce CHIWEENIE and the Poultry Liberation Front. It is the story of mine and Herself’s little dogs and their running conflict with the neighbor’s chickens. Warning: while it is a colouring book, I’d be a little careful before giving it to kids.
Well, that one was kind of a hit, so Cedar and I decided to try another one, and we launched The Ratel Saga, which is a colouring book of my five (?) part story regarding the ratel trap in our backyard in Nigeria.
Again, it has been a bit successful, and Cedar is currently working on a third colouring book, which will have the stories of the Nigerian Space Lizards, the Sapper Lizards, and the story of the Major.
Three Ravens Publishing did a Hallowe’en Anthology titled It Came From The Trailer Park, and I’ve got a little short story in there, which was really fun to write.
I’ve got a couple of more projects which will be blog posts of their own, so give me a second.
LawDog