3.16.20 - #corona2020 II

I realized, only recently, how poorly I do with internal anxiety
There’s a train, running away, in my head sometimes
If I try, stay busy, maybe the brakes may recover before
I reach the end of the bridge, the end of the world

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First full real day of what seems like a real, new normal. Not that we would go out if we could, ‘cause we can’t afford it, but because this illness is a bad rollercoaster ride. We’re not sure if J and D have it, since there weren’t testing kits last week. They’re supposed to call the Georgia Board of Health or something, go through a questionnaire, to even qualify for a test. Right now we’re operating under a 14-day quarantine diagnosed as pneumonia for J, and a 5-day quarantine diagnosed as bronchitis for D. I feel fine, but there’s a tension in the air. We’re faced with the added anxieties of having nothing better to do than reflect on our own past terrors and nightmares. While we wait on referrals for therapists to work through the overloaded for-profit under-prepared American Health Care nightmare, the news outside gets worse and the future darkens a little.

So I went to the gym anyway. I need something besides working my way through the feedback notes on Gravity’s Reach in preparation for a May Writer’s Conference that likely could be cancelled. I’ve been working on the Robin Hood homage, and that’s been more fun. I also have to check grades, put together plans for next week (both planning for online or in-class delivery), and take care of three hurting people.

”We’re broken, but we’re not damaged goods.”

”We do the best we can.”

At least one thing I can pull, a few moments with the dog in the backyard watching her play before she spent hours by my side while I wrote.

That’s the career I want, where I can spend my days giving head scratches while writing the next story.

3.15.20 - #corona2020

Maybe we’re all going a little mad at the idea
Plucked straight out an eighties sci-fi novel
Empty shelved truths are stranger fictions
When a virus can spread at the worst of times
Bringing people to whimpers of shared terror
When nightmares awaken our lesser demons

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Funny, today was my most productive day writing, in a while. Meanwhile, outside our little quarantine zone, seems like the hubcaps are coming off, if not the wheels. The shelves were emptied at the bigger stores. Toilet paper has become a meme in our ironic pessimistic chuckle towards self-destruction. None of us can go to work tomorrow, so we’re all stuck here another week. Two with doctors notes for self-quarantine (even though neither got tested because there were no kits), and two because their schools closed for a week. We’re trying to keep each other sane, co-existing and being bored. For me, it’s easy. For the girls, who are dealing with the traumas of their past head-on while the world seems to be imploding outside, it’s been rough.

I don’t know what I can say sometimes that’ll make them feel better, what’ll help. I’ve learned that if I just sit there and say I’ll listen, sometimes that helps. Maybe it just helps us all, to not be miserable alone, in the dark. Just to know that someone else is sitting there, next to you.

Now I’m gonna go set next to my spouse and let her cry on my shoulder. Love those around you, y’all.

2.22.20

Outside, the deck is frosted over and slick
I was already numb before I slid across it
Haven’t felt warm enough to smile in years
The house is falling apart but it’s a rental
Breaking down slowly in a borrowed body
Dreaming of another path I can’t see
Through tangled, thorny, weeds and trees
Five years of writing that no one ever reads

2.16.20

What the brain tells you and what’s real are contradictory
When depression and anxiety run rampant in a mind
Medication and therapy need to happen but that only
Deals with the symptoms and not the real problem
Change has to be tangible and it must happen soon
While reality is survivable, we were meant for more

2.15.20 - Query Letter

Rising from an impoverished Earth, “Crash” Downs achieved a dream: admission into the famous interstellar Ranger program. Billions will watch him and a group of underdog soldiers endure training and competition against genetically perfect opponents on the Challenge, a televised spectacle that makes celebrities out of soldiers. Yet, Crash’s fight is only a deadly distraction in a galactic game of cat and mouse between the oppressive United Corporate Federation and the star systems they subjugate. 

Behind the scenes, a savant hacker named Glitch stumbles across a devious plot by megacorporate titans to inconceivably destroy Earth completely. In a society drowning in hopelessness and fear, somehow he must convince a tenacious syndicate spy hunting him, the galaxy’s first telepath, and a gene-enhanced pilot whose dreams tell the future, to enter a fight against overwhelming odds, setting the table for the war to end all wars. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance. No matter who wins, the ultimate threat to life in the Milky Way is out in cold, unexplored space, and the waves of our gravity bomb will reach out to draw them in.

Beta Reader feedback has been overwhelmingly positive to this galaxy-crossing story told from the perspective of three imperfect souls in just under 112,000 words, Gravity’s Reach is the first of a planned science fiction saga drawing inspiration from titles like Starship Troopers, Mass Effect, and Ender’s Game.