Sunday, January 17, 2021

Biden Inauguration Sale!

Just before the 2012 Election, I self-published Political Pies, a collection of forty of my stories with a political element.  I tried to make the stories as neutral or equally condemning of the parties as I could because I wasn’t trying to force an agenda, I just wanted people to start thinking about issues.  Since then, to try to get it into as many hands as I could, I usually have a free sale of it for the Fourth of July, elections, and inaugurations.  Usually I just have it by itself, but last year I started doing sales with multiple books, so that’s what I’m doing here. 

So, between Sunday January 17th and Thursday January 21st, you can grab the following five Kindle ebooks for free. 

Political Pies


Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into my Political Pies anthology. My stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.

The Future is Coming


As a science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel that I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is coming.

Brain for Rent and other stories


Brain for Rent and other stories is a collection of five of my short scifi stories to give a sampling of my writing. The collection includes: “Brain for Rent” about a ne’re-do-well failed writer with a conceptual implant who discusses his work with a young woman thinking of getting an implant herself. “The Demonstration” is about a different young woman wanting to show off her latest body modification. “Self Imprisonment” offers one solution of safe keeping the backup copy of yourself. “The Best Job Ever” is about a necessary – yet unpleasant – human/alien interaction. And the collection ends with “Why Stay?” which explains why, after years of fighting the humans, the robots just deactivate.

An Ounce of Prevention


Like most people, Jason Fisher wanted to make the world a better place, but he doubted he would ever have the chance to make much of a mark. Then a “woman” came to him, asking his help to save humanity by threatening it.

Lonely Phoenix



Partway to a new colony world, board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking crew of the Lucian. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his other claims.

Monday, January 11, 2021

Random Story – Y’all Need Jesus

This is just an odd little story from my life.

So I have a crappy, essential, retail job.  We have several signs in the store saying that customers need to wear masks, but it is a rural, middle of nowhere place, and only about half the customers do.  And I think corporate sees it as if we piss off the rednecks, we’ll lose half our business, so we don’t say anything.

This story happened a month or so ago.  The first character was a little, older lady of maybe sixty, who was wearing a mask.  The second character was a guy in his thirties with what I assume was his ten year old son.  Neither of them wore a mask.  The lady said something to the man, I didn’t hear exactly what, but I think it was along the lines of wearing a mask would help protect his son.  The guy didn’t yell, he just spoke at a notch or two above normal speaking voice so his son standing five feet away could easily hear him, but he said, “Why don’t you go out to the parking lot and get hit by a fucking truck.” Then he muttered a notch or two below his normal speaking voice, “Cunt.” The lady didn’t reply, she just walked away. 

The last piece of information for this story, is that the guy was wearing a shirt that read – with large letters – “Y’all Need Jesus.”