Belated Survival Report

I forgot to mention last week that I survived Hurricane Florence. Where I live, it turned out to be light rain and wind with high humidity. The humidity had just started to turn lower for autumn until that. Because of a another weather system, it has stayed high with warmer temperatures. In my post two weeks ago I mentioned the problem with hurricane coverage on television is all the exaggeration and how weathermen will lean into the wind and scream into the microphone about how bad the storm is while someone in shorts walks past in the background. I specifically mentioned already seeing that kind of exaggeration on the Weather Channel minus the people in the background. Check out the first 30 seconds of this video. Weather Channel equals busted.

After the last blog it occurred to me that I need to re-prioritize the order of books coming out. I was going to work on the non-fiction with the mystery/romance giving me a break on the side. That won't work. I need to get the next B'vellah War book out. The non-fiction has to have the highest priority, but I may work on two at once. When last we left book 2, I had to withdraw it from sale, because of problems. My goal is not to do a rewrite but to fix it if possible. That would make it a lot faster.

Something else that has been on my mind is a business a friend of mine has been trying to start for a number of years. She's done a tremendous amount of work on it, yet it has never gotten off the ground or made a profit. She can't figure out why. I suddenly realized recently what the one, main obstacle is. Should I tell her? She already doesn't listen to anything about it. To make it worse, one day a few months ago she mentioned an online video game. Ever since, she has been playing that and been almost out of contact. I'll send an occasional message to try to stay in touch and generally get an impersonal, one-word reply, sometimes a day late. If it was my business, I'd want to know. I feel that morally I need to say something, but almost everything is pointing toward no.

I was at Walmart the other day and saw Christmas trees. I was in Lowe's this week and saw Christmas trees beside Halloween displays. It's still September. If the Hallmark Channel isn't showing Christmas movies, it's still too early for Christmas.

Have a great weekend.

The Non-Fiction Book is Back

I finished the "last" pass through AoE. It's getting very close to being out the door. Aside from the cover, I have to fix one final problem I just found. At an important arc in the book, several characters are missing who should be there, and a character who doesn't have a stated reason to be there is present. It makes sense the way it is. The reader can logically assume things are the way they are from prior events, but I'll need to go back and add a few sentences explaining the absences and why that extra character is there. Writing him out would make sense, too, though that would take extra time I don't want to spend.

It was something of a long week. After I finished the AoE pass, I was able to take a look at the first couple of chapters of the mystery/romance. I wrote it around 2013 and 2014 as something different, when I needed a break from the other books. My dad died in late 2013, and that caused a lot of disruption. The level of polish isn't what it would be today. In a perfect world I could think about a re-write. This isn't a perfect world. I have too many other books to do. Unless I see something absolutely dreadful, I'm going to give it a good polish and kick it out the door. Under a pen name, of course. It was always going to be under one. Now it really, really is. I'm not sure about the timing, though. I have another book that needs to go out as soon as possible. I may work on the mystery'romance on the side as a mental break from that book.

I've mentioned a non-fiction book that would be a collection of things people don't hear in the churches of institutional Christianity or in the "independents" either. Denominational Christianity is very culture bound. A lot of the way people view the Bible seems to come out of mindsets present in the Dark Ages. Too much of Protestant thinking flowed down directly from Catholicism. The reformers didn't correct all the bad doctrine, and it's still taught in Protestant denominations.

I've been collecting a list of topics of things I've gotten revelation on that denominational Christianity isn't capable of thinking, because of traditions(Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which you have delivered: and many such like things you do.) and cultural biases. Lately, I've had a massive insight into who the anti-Christ really is. Not the specific person but who and what that person will be. Very controversial stuff. I've also seen a different way of looking at the Rapture that will settle the debate once and for all without a list of scores of verses. :) Hint: my new doctrine doesn't use the twinkling of an eye verse. Sounds intriguing, eh? "That they should believe the lie." I know what the lie is, and it has nothing to do with fallen angels posing as aliens. And so on.

I haven't felt I had enough material to flesh out a full book. I hate it when people publish a Christian "book" that's basically a 163-page booklet but still has a full price on it. If it's only 100+ pages, it's probably not ready. It certainly doesn't justify top dollar. I think now I can make a full book that will give people their money's worth while delivering solid revelation. I also see a way of promoting it. So, that's become my top priority. I'm not 100% sure on the page count, but I'm going to start on the text anyway.

Have a great weekend.

Waiting on Flo

This week was more work on the final pass through AoE. It's almost done except the cover. I've also watched some painting videos for technical insight. I'm thinking of a cityscape, but I've never painted one. In principal a daylight scene should be like a landscape painting with lighter values in the background and darker values in the foreground. I don't think I'll do a night scene. I think it would be easier, but I want strong, eye-catching color. The main thing is to try to keep it simple enough for my skills. :)

I'm waiting to see what hurricane Florence does where I live. According to the last map of its path I saw, my area is at the edge of the red zone. That means heavy wind and rain, as it will be a tropical depression by that point. A forecast from a few days ago predicted 1 to 12 inches of rain, but it depends on the track it takes and all that. Monday is supposed to be clear.

The problem with hurricanes is all the exaggeration. Weather forecasters will stand out in the wind leaning against it shouting into the microphone about how bad it is. Then in the background someone in shorts and no shirt will walk by and glance over at the reporter like he's a moron. I'm seeing a lot of that on the Weather Channel minus the people in the background. They've picked isolated places to avoid that sort of reality.

It's time for another installment of Is He Still Alive? Born in 1936 Burt Reynolds was in tons of things. Nobody told me he died. I saw a commercial for a memorial marathon of things he was in and had to look it up. He died last week at 82. He was in a lot of not so great movies, but he was funny. I saw him on the Carson show. I wouldn't have guessed that. One of his most famous movies was Deliverance. If you haven't seen it, don't. It would scar your soul. I bring it up, because that movie is mentioned in the first Messengers book. The characters are being chased through the woods by scary people. One of them mentions that, "This is so Deliverance." I live near where the movie was filmed. I like to say that this isn't Deliverance country, but you can see it from here.

Have a great weekend.

I've Solved It

It was a wet, rainy summer with lower temperatures. That is gone. It's been hot and humid. But that's not important right now.

I like the Braves and the Cubs. The Cubs are "out of market" in my area, so I usually watch or listen to the Braves. For a long time they've had a television announcer I wish they would get rid of. He's the worst one they've ever had in the modern era. The other announcers are former major league players. This guy is not, and does it ever show.

That bad announcer calls plays before they happen. Live television is delayed by two to five seconds, depending on who you listen to. If anything unusual happens, the public will never see it. The government will control the explanation of what happened. Censorship is built in and automatic. When the plays were being called before the video showed them, it seemed logical that the video and audio were out of sync because of the time delay on the video.

To make it worse, the bad announcer often calls plays that are not actually happening in the game. You can never trust that his description of the game is correct. I thought he was dramatizing the game to make it more exciting to fans. However, recently he made a call so bad I finally realized what he's been doing. He called a catch at the base of the wall in the outfield. It wasn't even close. The catch was actually made on the grass. The fielder never set foot on the warning track.

Maybe I've been a little slow on this, but I've solved it. That bad guy is not calling plays he sees. He's calling plays he thinks are going to happen. He's predicting the future and failing miserably. In a sense he's one-upping the other announcers by trying to be the first to call the play. He's even worse than I thought. I can't wait for him to be gone.

Moving on.

I don't have central air, so it's been too hot to do a lot on the computer. When I can, I've been working on polishing AoE. It's almost done. I have one more pass to go through and make final decisions about the hardest things to edit. It shouldn't take long at all. Then it's just the cover, and it's out the door. The weather is slowly turning cooler. It looks like next week will see a nice improvement in productivity.

Have a great weekend.