GOD CAN'T BREATHE

Proving fiction can be prophetic,

I wrote this 4 years ago,

birthed from a news photo.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005NCUTAG

Ten days before a Katrina-bruised Christmas, 

and here I was out on the streets once more.  Alice had told me she never wanted to see me again.

Don't ask why.  

I'm Victor Standish. 

I always find a way to snatch defeat out of the mouth of victory.  It is my curse to be always alone.

It was night and cold for once in New Orleans.  A little black and white puppy, starved down to a walking set of ribs, shivered in the alley to my right.

I took the stale croissant from my lips.  I bent down and held it out to the poor little guy.  

"C'mon, Lucky. Good groceries."

I jerked as a black man appeared as if out of nowhere.  "You call him Lucky?"

"Yeah," I smiled.  "He's got a new friend ... me."

I petted Lucky's tiny head. "And he'll never be hungry or alone again."

The man looked ripped as if he pumped iron, and he laughed at me. 

"Not iron ... wood.  Plane a tree into planks, and it builds muscle."

He sighed as he saw Lucky hesitantly nuzzle my hand. 

 “No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, 

to be stunned by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.”

He squeezed my shoulder.  "Name's Joshua.  Yours?"

"Victor.  Victor Standish."

"Heard of you."

"I'm nobody.  Just a street punk living out another nothing day."

Joshua shook his head.   

“No day is without profound meaning, no matter how nothing it might seem, no matter whether you are a street kid or a movie star."

He nodded to Lucky.  

"Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others. 

Each smallest act of kindness reverberates across great distances and spans of time, 

affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, 

because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, 

until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away."

As Lucky ducked back into the alley, Joshua looked at a roving band of police heading our way, malice in their eyes and guns on their hips. 

(A really sucky combination.)

" Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act,  

can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, 

poisoning people whom you have never met and never will."

Joshua pushed me behind him and into the alley with Lucky.  

"All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—

that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands."

 As the cops spotted Joshua and started to laugh like wolves, he said softly, 

"Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world 

that great days and thrilling possibilities are combined in this precious gift called the present.” 

He slipped to his knees, putting his hands atop his head.  It wouldn't do him any good.  

What few cops were left in New Orleans were pretty much stressed-out, walking time bombs.  

I faded into the shadows.  Not that I was deserting Joshua.  My name wasn't Peter.  

You never leave a friend behind.  Friends are the only true wealth you can expect in this life and the only treasure you can hope to find in the next.

Lucky growled as the bully boys whacked Joshua with their night sticks to get him back on his feet.

"Hey!" yelled one.  "He's attacking!"

Another grabbed Joshua by the throat, fingers closing in on his wind-pipe.  

"Can't ... breathe," Joshua gasped out.

"Hey, Ass-Wipes!" I snarled with three ball bearings between the fingers of each hand.  

"God can't breathe!"

"What?" snarled the closest to me.

I said low, "In as much as you did it unto the least of these, you have done it unto Me."

"Knee cap him, Jim!" spat the officer to his right.

I slung two ball bearings each into their open mouths.  

Hey, when your life depends on your aim for years, you learn not to miss.

Suddenly, they were the ones on the ground not being able to breathe. 

Joshua got up.  "How did you know?"

With His words giving proof to my guess, I felt a great weight lift off my chest.  

While all these rough years I felt as if no one saw, no one cared.


Someone always had.  

"Well, you replied to my thought about you being pumped.  And I read a lot.  Jesus is just Greek for Joshua.  And it is your time of the year."

Joshua shook his head at me.  

"Every day is my time of the year.  Now, come help me with these officers."

"Aw, man!  I am not gonna do mouth-to-mouth on them.  I mean I might kiss a ghoul, and all, but even I have standards!"

"Victor!"

"Uh, can we at least wait until they're deprived of oxygen long enough to be brain-damaged?"

"Victor!!"

"Oh, yeah, that would be kinda redundant, wouldn't it?"

But it wasn't a total loss. Lucky peed on them.

WRONG THINKING IS NOW RIGHT?

As the long, hot summer of 2020 begins, the facts suggest that the U.S. is not going to beat the coronavirus. 

 Several states, Arizona, North Carolina, and California, 

are now seeing their highest numbers of known cases.

 Image by UnratedStudio from Pixabay

 These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before this week of protest. 

An even larger spike now seems likely.

 Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

  It is a bitter cruelty that the people who might suffer most are 

also fighting for justice in a way that almost certainly increases their risk of being infected ...

And so in turn, 

lead to hundreds of deaths of those they infect by protesting the horrific murder of George Floyd.

 Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Because there are some undeniably racist, violent police, 

the extreme chant of ABOLISH THE POLICE is not only being screamed by protestors, 

but city, state, and Federal authorities are loathe to be on the vote-stealing side of a Hot Topic.

Ever hear of 

the REIGN OF TERROR?

It began with the overthrow of the Girondins and the ascendancy of the Jacobins under Robespierre. 

Against a background of foreign invasion and civil war, 

opponents were ruthlessly persecuted and  1400 executed by the guillotine ...

including Robespierre who had by that time become dictator of France.

Image by SamWilliamsPhoto from Pixabay

No Police? 

Who do you think 

will cheer the most?

It Is In Our Nature To Destroy Ourselves

On this day in 1968 Robert Kennedy was assassinated.  

Martin Luther King had been murdered in the spring.

The times are not a'changing, 

for we are not.  

Not really.

But each act of forgiveness, of kindness 

helps slow our descent.

That is something to remember in times like these.

WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL_IWSG post

With pandemics, riots, 
senseless violence,  

What we can control in our lives
Seems non-existent.

What you can control as a writer 

these days 

seems to amount to very little,

 too, doesn't it?

You cannot control being knocked down,

but you can control getting up

one more time than they knock you down.

There is no secret formula 

to become a best seller

else we would all be Stephen King.

The common concept 

of Social Media Marketing

is NOT the answer

How tired are you of reading 

BUY ME! novel tweets?

How frustrated are you of FB requests 

to like a Book Page?

It is like selling a kiss.

Even if you make a sale,

there is no satisfaction to it. 

It is like kissing your sister.

So what control do we have?

We can choose to grow as a writer, 

as a human being.

Each story we write 

we strive to make better 

than the last.

We do not market an individual book.

We market ourselves.

We are the Brand that will sell.

If each blog post we write 

is evocative or funny or touching,

then, our readers 

will feel those qualities

will be in any new novel we write.

Take  

The HAUNTING of Hill House.

Based on the evocative book 

by Shirley Jackson,

the series will inspire you 

to rise above the

ordinary limits of 

whatever genre you are writing.

How do you make each new story, 

new novel better?

You start with the 

hearts of your characters.

Make them people to root for,

 to like, 

to mourn when life 

extracts its tuition from them.

Hill House is filled with decent, 

charming people

in an originally crafted 

series of dangers

whose explanation at the end 

will have you crying.

Each of your characters,

like each character in Hill House,

should have have a scene

where they come alive 

in the minds of the readers,

giving them an 

"Yes, I've been there" moment.

What do you control?  

What are your chances of success?

You are like a WWII fighter pilot.

All you can do is your best.

Fly the heart out of your dream.

You may be shot out of the sky.

But before then,

you will have flown!

Thoughts For Today

“A thought, even a possibility, 

can shatter and transform us.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 

PUT EVERY THOUGHT WHERE IT BELONGS

WHAT REALLY ELEVATES MANKIND?

 

SOMETIME "SMALLEST" 

CARRIES THE MOST WEIGHT 

STAY SAFE, STAY HEALTHY,

MY FRIENDS!

DRACULA was born today!

The first copies of  DRACULA went on sale on this day in London in 1897.

An invalid most of his childhood, Bram became a soccer star at Trinity College in Dublin.

Image by AnnRos from Pixabay

From writing drama reviews for THE DUBLIN MAIL he went to being the secretary for the noted stage actor, Sir Henry Irving.

 It is a unique horror story, told from a variety of diaries and journals of its cast of characters 

(no one having the complete story), 

it is a precursor of sorts for the "found footage" genre of cinema.

In my own END OF DAYS,

Samuel McCord and Father Renfield, the father of THAT Renfield, 

teach a class of troubled preternatural teens how to piece together the truth of what they see from DRACULA.

On this day in 1891, EDITH WHARTON's first short story, Mrs. Manstey's View, was published by Scribner's Magazine.

She did not come from the write what you know school.  

She was 29, brought up in wealth and high society, and was recently married to a prominent banker. And she was quite opposite to her destitute heroine. 

Samuel Pepys died this day in 1703, aged 70. 

The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century 

and is one of the most important primary sources for that period ...

It holds first hand accounts of 

the Great London Fire, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London.

Just think of the great events you have seen in the past 20 years.  

What a thrilling memoir for later generations you could write of them.  

Do you have the time now?

Have We Lost the MEANING of MEMORIAL DAY?

We enjoy lovely videos of Memorial Day with graves draped in colorful American flags

as lovely music plays in the background.


We watch and listen to stirring Memorial Day parades, 


flags snapping in the breeze and bands playing stirringly as they march in unison.

People in our country's neighborhoods will be having the biggest and best barbecues, 


but the forgotten spirits of those slain upon a thousand distant foreign fields would take us to the cemeteries on Memorial Day.


Would they tell us that we could eat all the barbecue we want on the Fourth of July 


and to just murmur a small thanks over their graves today?


No one sets out to be a hero, and certainly no one wants to die a bloody, violent death.

But thousands upon thousands found themselves in terrible situations where they needed a hero, 


so that is what they became.

They died so that we would have a chance to live as best we could.


 We couldn’t enjoy sun-drenched summer days like today without their sacrifice.

Living in the world today is a challenge unlike one that has ever been seen in the past. 


But as thousands rose to the occasion when all seemed dark, we, too, can rise to tackle the obstacles facing us.

Yes, today is a day where we mourn the loss of precious lives and innocence.
  

But today is also a day where we celebrate the victory of the human spirit over darkness ...

and this gives us hope.