Here is your bloody newsletter...lol...

Well, well, how things have changed...it's been a month, and after toying around with a couple of web programs to do a newsletter, I've begun to realize what a great waste of time that is.

Do people really want these things? Newsletters, monthly updates of doings by the great authors, oh yes, look what we're doing, where we're going, and all that.

I wish I had a lot more to tell you, which would justify such a thing, but I'm afraid I don't. I certainly have not been without enterprise, and I can look at a very busy September, which is turning into a month that is more of the same.

First, without all the clip art, headings, deciding on font size, colors, and all that shit, let's think about the newsletters for their content. I have a few fellow authors who send me these things, and they clearly work on them, or they just know how whip those out in no time. I don't have the time or the incentive.

I have one friend whose blog is kind of her newsletter, and she writes when she feels like it, has time, and so forth. I think I want to follow that lead.

The Covid-19 thing is on my mind, because I have to be out and about, nearly every day, apart from my weekends. That is not going to change, because of a decision taken by a certain Very Big Communications Company of America.

To put it plainly, I was let go. Now, I was furloughed in mid-March, and the corporation locked down, sealed up and otherwise turned their buildings into dead zones. Appropriate, as so many other companies did. I was furloughed until today, but learned yesterday my services were no longer required.

This was a weekend job, primarily, largely thankless and I was reminded at many turns that despite my education and my experience, I was still of little account. Fine.

I have as I've explained, enjoyed my Splendid Isolation. While I work during the week, sometimes on my audiobook job for Sunbury Press Books, the Radio PA Network, and as everyone's backup at Forever Media Lebanon, I had time to be at home.

Lots of it. I'm going to tell you what I've done during these nearly seven months of weekend isolation. I finished writing a very good manuscript for a book called "How the Story Ends," though where in my canon it goes, I've not idea yet. I have edited the sequel to "Searching for Roy Buchanan..." -- oh, that's right.

SHAMELESS PLUG TIME!

I edited the sequel, "Call it Love," and I'm awaiting the 2nd edit to come back. I have edited a long string of completed works, waiting for their eventual releases, and wrote a new draft of a work called "The Last Refugee." You can read the intro in the previous blog post.

While I have done all I can to keep the Covid at bay, and I tested negative one month ago, I am keeping to staying out of sight. For all the complaining that we can't do things because of Covid, I would just ask...

"Do you want to die?"

"Do you want to be sick?"

"Do you want to face the possibility that you could become so ill that you spend the final hours of your life in isolation, hooked up to a ventilator, with no one but a nurse to see you...alone?"

Do you really want to take that risk? Having been THAT close to death years ago, I say no.

Now...speaking of death...my eldest brother Mark almost kept that appointment with the man in black who carries a scythe. It was not Covid, but I cannot go into his medical condition, because I really don't know, nor do we know the circumstances that led up to his being found by our middle brother David, that close to it?

He is out of ICU, thankfully, and is headed to a rehab center. We'll see how he responds to treatment. His daughter Hanna, her husband and their newborn son had to travel to Vermont from Chicago to be with him, and all respect to them for handling the situation as adroitly as they have.

I remember where I was 26 years ago, and think, I know all too well what it's like. The shit ain't fun, people.

So yeah...been pretty worrisome. My losing a weekend job is not the worst that could happen. In fact, I'm feeling pretty damned fortunate right now. I'm alive, I have my health, I have a roof over my head, food, cats to keep me entertained (and someone who makes me clean up more than I normally would!), and my creative madness.

Now, how about this:

https://www.hersheylibrary.org/local-author-spotlight/?fbclid=IwAR18r-MFYD_uznjtGpwswFwmOf7DH_vxTZWHhT_ubMAMi8mk9b4hZbPx2jY

Click on that, and you will see I am featured author of the month for the Hershey Library. We were supposed to do a book event in April, then this fall, then not at all.

You will also get to see my video

Did you see it already? Anyway, Baldrick decided to join in, and did you notice he was not there at the start of the video, but sneaked in between the book and my stomach, like magic. Perfect timing.

Makes it, I think. Anyway, some authors are doing virtual events. I have this idea for a Socially Distant Book Signing, and one of my former colleagues laughed heartily at this idea. Makes me think it might work.

Of course, we are also headed into the final month of a time that could decide what kind of nation we have, and what kind of future we provide for those who follow us. I've sadly watched the bratty, infantile, spoiled, entitled middle schooler (sorry to middle schoolers, I know not all of your are this way) come out of too damned many people in this county.

Did you think I was gonna say You Know Who? Either way, we know what is at stake. My mail-in ballot came today; it is complete and ready to go out. I will do my civic duty, and exercise my right, whether you agree with me or not.

Here is a case in point: the pandemic has put a lot of people on edge, scared a lot, and we often mask that not by wearing one as we should, but by projecting our fear onto everyone and everything else.

A friend of mine at a certain business, which reopened after several weeks, and is likely doing way less than they'd like, told me, the customers have been even meaner than they usually are. Apparently, patience is not a virtue with those who have money to spend and can afford others to wait upon them.

They are even worse than they were before. What I wrote about in an anthology on the pandemic hasn't come to pass: some of us have not changed.

We are still mean, angry, hateful and lash out when we don't get our way, when our order isn't ready when we get there, when things don't go the way we want. At times, stress gets us, and there are times when a release is understood. It happens...but all the time? What license did you get to make you ten times worse?

Now, word came this evening that You Know Who is in hospital. I want nothing bad to happen; I want him to come out of it, because there is that old thing about what is coming to you.

Karma is a muthafuckin' bitch. We all face it, no matter what you may think, your karma is decided by your words, deeds, actions, etc. We all fuck up, make mistakes, do wrong, but...do we make things right, do we learn, do we take the chance to make it right?

I'm again and again reminded...complaints are justified, if there is a situation that you need to get righted. You can be reasonable, professional, and cool; usually these things right themselves.

Or you can just blow the fuck up, like too many people do. Put on your damned mask, wash your goddamned hands, put some distance between you and the next person, and deal.

I have cut back my Facebook use, so I am not there as much. I still use it to promote my books, my online show, etc., but it's been really nice to take it off my phone. So much quieter. Heh.

The quiet is actually pretty nice right now. I can hear my neighbors out on the street talking, my next door neighbors moving about in their house, and my cats thumping around. I am usually playing music a lot, but I shut it off for a bit. It is a nice thing...a most pleasing result, as Taru said in "Searching for Roy Buchanan."

So much more to do, to work on, to read, to think about. My phone is off, and this is going off.

I'm getting some peace of mind getting this off my chest, and I am liking it like that. More to do, indeed.

Peace, Out.