Having covered politics and sex it was time to turn my attention to the last of the “not to be discussed” triumvirate of religion. More specifically Christianity and ever more so, Roman Catholicism. Only two of the machines are believers and I’d guess about half, barely, of the human characters who get a speaking role in my twelve books are. I and my characters are never preachy but it is a very important matter for many of them.
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Nearly twenty minutes of a middle-aged ex-engineer talking about sex. Perhaps your time would be better watching your grass grow? In modern times, this very important subject is treated so lightly and so callously that our society finds itself confusing “gender” with sex and thinking there are scores of them. That’s not how I roll.
Even in one of my earliest books one of the machines says, “Sex differences go all the way down in a way even we do not comprehend. The coders did not know that and many early models went insane.” Never once does any character speak of gender. Even the co-creation byproduct of humans carries elements of their sexuality, leading to Thaad’s most interesting development.
NOTE: more than any other podcast to-date, this one is packed full of spoilers. FYI.
As you hopefully can see, I have made several structural changes to this site. The RSS’s for the podcasts are now at the top of the sidebar. Instead of listing all links to my books – after all, they are on display right there – I have an overall link to Amazon and Smashwords. Yes, yes: baby steps. But steps nonetheless.
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This is a freebee to all my readers. It is from my short story collection entitled “Empire’s Agent.” The reason I’m tossing it out there is that a fellow Gabber, and a good man, is dying and expressed concern what to tell his grandkids. Thought I could lend a hand.
Continue reading ““No better friend; no worse enemy””Had a co-worker over for cocktails yesterday afternoon. Ohio allows personal interaction and we’re both “vital medical personnel” *snort* so we do what we want in the Dark Age of BatAIDS. He’s one of the folks who encouraged me to think seriously about making audiobooks. We covered that subject and several others. While mildly lef of center, we discovered that we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on issues such as private property and firearms. He’s not particularly religious and was surprised to find out I’m Catholic. I stared at him over the rim of my Martini and asked, “You’ve read three of my books. Did you think those elements fell in there by accident?” All in all, an excellent Saturday afternoon.
Below the fold, anxious for her men and wanting to reunite her army, Faustina thinks of ways to bluff her next opponent rather than fighting a battle. Which is a polite way of saying I don’t want to throw away another week thinking about it.
Which, for my overseas readers, is an actual river and city in the State of Mississippi. Faustina has to move fast: both to prove herself as a legionary commander and to show that she’s better than humans. In this segment, the first of two before the Battle of Winona (there will finally be shooting, I promise), she schools her distant relations on strategy and tactics in the former US as well as that attacking the enemy’s mind is always more effective than attacking their body.
I am also older that to write a campaign, you have to plan a campaign. A visual example of that is at the very end of this entry.
After not formally writing for a week and half, I feel as if I should be entering rehab; I have (looks about) five pages of notes from downtime at DayJob and quiet times about my house but when I just didn’t the time to sit down in front of the laptop.
That came to an end today. Daughter #2 off on a cancer fun-raiser, wife doing something about the house somewhere… I’d no more excuses. I fired up the pellet stove in the basement and came down thirty minutes later to write. So far, it’s working. 3k words of Faustina’s recover in the Knoxville hospital flowed right out. There’s much there: her physical condition, the reaction of her family to her injuries, and her fervent desire to return to “her boys” as soon as she is able. It will be a balancing act for her, in, I think, three parts. Here’s part one.
Not so much for me, other than I’ve made much progress these two days… even though I am only just now getting to the leading edge of my notes I made at the local Book Fair fail of a week ago. Make haste slowly. No, the good news is below the fold.
It’s officially the winter season at the Barnett Residence: with this recent cold snap I have un-mothballed our pellet stove in our basement. It keeps things about 80F down there. The ground floor is set around 65F and upstairs falls to 61F or lower when the wind howls.
Another busy DayJob week leading to no writing at all for nearly four days. On the morning of the fourth day I texted my wife that I was becoming morbidly depressed. She counselled me to hang on a bit longer. Wisdom: in the past day and a half I’ve written just over 3000 words about little Fussy and her first battle, the first part of which is just below the fold.
Going into a lovely early Fall weekend with little to do? Need something to while away time with the cool breeze and falling leaves? If you have not yet, download and read “The Fourth Law” and “Echoes of Family Lost” FOR FREE (while you can!) then go on to read the latest addition to my future history of Machine Civilization just now released! Cheers!
In writing, unlike retail, the reader is usually but not always correct. The fact that I was sailing serenely on with all the “likes” to the ‘Empire’s Agent’ short story, only to have NONE for the last installment, surprised me. I reread it and came up with some possibilities… there most certainly might be others (mild spoilers for Empire’s Agent – End)
I am seriously puzzled by this one, friends.
