Poem: We are the Tired Generation

We are the tired generation

Not millennials

Not snowflakes

Not you damn kids

We are tired

Tired of being told we can't or we won't

Tired of being told we're wrong

Tired of being told we're unskilled

Tired of being the hopeless while being seen as the helpless

Tired of being told we killed this industry or that product

Tired of being told we're the ruin of this country

Tired of being unheard

When it was you who failed to teach

It was you who failed to lead

It was you who failed to train

It was you who failed to care

It was you who made us helpless and hopeless

We are the inheritors of a wrecked economy, drowning in debt and in hate

We were expected to do as you did without knowing that what you did doesn't work anymore

You tell us to grow up, take a stand, fight for what we want

But when we do, you tell use to sit down, be quite, mind the status quo

Now we say the status quo doesn't work for us

You fight us, fight for how it's always been done

Instead of listening to how we want to see our future, you tell us to live in your past

You had your chance to be teachers, instead you chose to be anchors

So now we say, sit down, listen, and learn from us

You've had your future, it is time for us to have ours

We are the tired generation

And we will rise

Cat, peanut butter, and working from home

I just had to clean peanut butter off my desk, my carpet, and my cat. How is your morning going?

 

This is the early morning text I sent my family and friends this morning.

This is my "I forgive you" face

 

What happened:

 

I was logging into my computer, getting ready to start working for the day with my breakfast sitting on the desk next to my keyboard (toasted blueberry bagel slathered with peanut butter) when Toothless decided to jump onto my desk.

 

Right onto the bagel.

 

I grabbed him and, in the scramble, the plate and half of the bagel ended up peanut butter side down on the floor, the other half stayed on my desk with a perfect pawprint in the peanut butter.

 

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with Toothless. I didn’t want to set him down somewhere and risk him spreading the peanut butter all over my apartment so I locked both of us in the bathroom, put him in the sink, and turned on the water.

 

For somebody who is always so curious about the wet sink and enjoys standing in it after I wash my hands, he was hella not happy to be in it with the water running. He kept trying to escape while I was trying to clean out as much of the peanut butter as I could, using hot water in the hopes it would cut through the oil in the peanut butter while trying to not burn him or me.

 

Funny story: peanut butter doesn’t come out of long cat hair.

 

Halfway through this mess, I was wishing I had grabbed the Dawn out of the kitchen to help with the peanut butter removal but I didn’t trust Toothless to stay put if I left to go get it. Plus, I didn’t know if I could keep him still long enough to get the Dawn on him and then rinsed out. Having a pissed off cat is one thing, having a pissed off cat with a mouth full of dish soap is a completely different can of worms.

 

So, I got as much of the peanut butter off of him as I could, grabbed the bath towel I use for my hair because I couldn’t reach any others, and got him wrapped up in it. Toothless hates being burrito wrapped because it usually means he’s getting his nails trimmed so that was fun. Took him back out to the living room so I could sit with him in my lap as I finished toweling him off.

 

As soon as I let him go, he stood in the middle of the living room and did his version of yowling (he’s a very quiet cat so his yowling is the same as a normal cat’s standard volume meow), then retreated to the corner to start licking himself clean.

Scruffy tail from this morning's shenanigans

 

It was 45 minutes straight of listening to him groom across the room from me.

 

Forty. Five. Minutes. *eye twitch*

 

Then, he went in my room to continue the process, before coming back out to the living room to lick some more.

 

The cleaning process of this wasn’t over for me, either. I grabbed a bowl and filled it with hot water and Dawn, then scrubbed the peanut butter out of my carpet. Thankfully, it’s brown so it blends right in. Tossed the bagel (sad face), cleaned the peanut butter off my desk, and returned to work.

 

One of the bad things about the whole situation is that the bagel was still warm from the toaster and the peanut butter was in a near-liquid state so when Toothless landed on it, it splattered all over. I found a couple of drops on my computer monitor almost 2 feet away from the crime scene.

 

I ended up bleeding, Toothless ended up looking like a half-drowned rat, I had cereal for breakfast, Toothless got a bunch of peanut butter and a sink bath. His tail still looks terrible, but he’s napping in his cat tree and all is right with the world.

 

So how was your day?

Four Horsemen Novel Excerpt

With everything being a dumpster fire right now, I thought it was the perfect time to share an excerpt from 1-800-Henchmen: Four Horsemen, since, you know, the world's ending. Enjoy!

“Meet the Four Horsemen: War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death.”

“Do they have real names?” LeRoy frowned.

“I’d imagine they do, but we could not find anything anywhere on the planet that reveals them.”

“What do we know?” Ray asked, studying the pictures.

The first one was a picture of War, -the woman Ray had found on the footage that had started their search. She was short and stocky with chin-length black and red hair. She had a tattoo on her neck that curled from just under her jaw down into her shirt. The picture looked like it was a mug shot from a prison in a third-world country and War was not happy to be there.

The second, Pestilence, was a man who greatly resembled War except he had white streaks in his long black hair and multiple facial piercings. The picture was from a security camera taken in a train station somewhere and showed Pestilence glancing covertly over his shoulder, a laptop case clutched tight to his chest.

The third picture showed a handsome blond man in a black-on-black-on-black power suit. Famine had been photographed stepping out of a black Maybach sedan in front of what looked like a country club somewhere tropical.

The fourth was of a beautiful blond woman with her hair pulled back severely from her face. Death was in a sharp charcoal suit, heels, and had large jade jewelry on that should have ruined the professional outfit but somehow enhanced it. She was standing in front of a steel-and-glass office building with a phone pressed to her ear and a briefcase in her other hand.

“Very little, actually.” Gibson sat down and gave his team a rueful smile. “This picture was from when War was captured in Russia after leading an attack on a government building in Moscow. She is a combat expert and a fairly popular mercenary. Very few people have been able to best her, and the only reason she was captured in Moscow was because she was drugged by a person on her own team. Even then, it took three Russian soldiers to take her in.”

Nikolai bristled at the thought that a small woman could get the better of his countrymen. “I will show her.”

Gibson chuckled. “Pestilence is War’s brother. As far as we can tell, they were born in Eastern Europe somewhere but spent a significant amount of their lives in the US. He is a ghost in the system and one of the best computer hackers I have ever seen or heard of. He is probably the reason the Four Horsemen don’t seem to exist. It’s tough to completely erase somebody from every computer system in the world, but a good enough hacker could do it, given enough time.”

“He better than you, cap?” Alfie asked with an impish grin.

“Yep.” Gibson’s eyes glittered dangerously. “But that’s not going to stop me from trying to bring him down.”

“Those are some crazy eyes, you got there.” Alfie leaned back with an exaggerated leery expression on his face.

Gibson shook his head and turned back to the pictures. “Famine is the idea man. He is the one who makes the plans and oversees execution. He creates relationships with powerful people in banks to get information about computer systems, layout, et cetera and then uses that information to make his plans infallible.”

LeRoy scoffed. “No plan is infallible.”

“La Grenouille Bouché would know,” Ray teased.

“Last, but not least, is Death.” Gibson cut them off before LeRoy could retort. “She is the one who gets the impossible information. No one seems to know how she does it. Even the people she has worked over can’t explain it. They just know they gave her the information but they can’t remember what kind of coercion she used. She works closely with Famine on the planning process.”

“What’s the plan?” Nikolai asked.

“What the plan normally is: direct confrontation, divert catastrophe, capture the bad guys.”

“Make the AOJ look good,” Ray muttered.

“We leave for London on Thursday morning. Let’s get prepped.”

Find the rest in 1-800-Henchmen: The Complete Series on Amazon.

Artists Supporting Artists

Last night I had a dream where I was a college professor in the 1950s or 1960s.

I think I’m watching too much of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. (It’s amazing, check it out on Prime, warning: strong language and some nudity)

Anyway, in my dream, I had just gotten a new job at a college working with Master of Arts students. At this college, the MA program was a joke, people just took it to get an easy master’s degree. Like, science students were going through to get their masters to fast-track their way to a doctorate (yes, I know this doesn’t make sense and getting an MA would not help getting a doctorate in anything else). I decided to change things up, make the MA worth something and of course I got push-back from everybody who didn’t want the MA program to be hard.

One of the programs I tried starting was Artists Supporting Artists. The basis of the program was to encourage art students to step out of their own area of expertise and support other artists. I woke up with the ASA program still dancing around in my head and the more I think about it, the more important I think it is.

I have always loved going to see plays/musicals, concerts, art shows, author/poetry readings, craft/makers shows, etc but this became more important to me when I became a writer.  I got first-hand experience with the struggles of an artist and I try to do whatever I can to help others who are going through the same things.

One thing I love about the writing community that I am a part of (and a lot of artist communities that I’ve come in contact with) is that it is very supportive. There’s not a ton of competition because if one of us succeeds, it doesn’t reduce other people's chances of also succeeding. 

It increases them. 

As societal focus shifts towards more STEM-based studies or the ever-present sports ball, it becomes more important for artists to support other artists. If you’re a writer, go to an art show. If you’re a sculptor, go to a play. If you’re a musician, volunteer to be a beta reader. It doesn’t have to be a huge commitment or cost what few spare pennies we have. Simply taking a few minutes out of your day to leave an amazon review, sending the creator a quick note on your social media platform of choice, or telling a friend about the awesome art you experienced will mean the world to the artist.

I taught my mom to blog today

I taught my mom to blog today.

This might be a terrible mistake or it could be the greatest thing every. Only time will tell.

My family used to start email threads that quickly devolved into madness and hilarity, something that disappeared when the last hold-out (me) got a smart phone, making family text messages possible for the first time and family emails a thing of the past.

I thought the blog would be a great way for the family to keep track of what my parents were up to, especially when they go out on the road in their camper, plus, my parents tend to stumble into the most ridiculous situations. Like the time their neighbors at the campgrounds had a pet pig tethered outside their camper on a harness and leash.

And I'm not taking about a teacup pig or even a potbelly pig. This thing was a full sized, make bacon out of it, pig.

You can even see some of my dad's writing on my guest blogger post View From the Cab that I posted back in 2016.

My dad didn't seem too enthused about the blog but he's recovering from surgery right now and all he wanted was a nap... something I can relate to wholeheartedly.

The wanting a nap part.

Not the surgery part. Never been under the knife. *knock on wood*

Know Your Weaponry: Firearms Presentation

This is the powerpoint from my presentation on firearms from the Nebraska Writers Guild Fall Conference 2019.

 The US Military is the #1 firearms purchaser in this country. Cabela's is #2.
I've been interested in weapons of all kinds since I was in about junior high and I worked at Cabela's for 9 years, five of which I spent selling firearms. I also own and use firearms. In addition, most of what I write includes weapons of some kind.
I tried to keep this presentation as informative and as politics free as possible. I know how much of a hot-button issue firearms are and didn't want to get into it during the class.

 This was not an all-encompassing history of firearms. There's no way to get that in a 45 minute presentation, it's just too extensive.

Gunpowder was invented in the early 9th century in China and was used for medicinal purposes. The first record of it being used in warfare was in 904. Gunpowder finally made it to the rest of Asia and into Europe in the 1300's on the Great Silk Road. The first hand-held firearms were hand-gonnes (top picture) which were essentially metal tubes on sticks that had a hole at the rear to ignite the gunpowder using a candle or burning stick. Matchlocks were invented in the late 1600's which had a lit wick on a mechnisim that would drop onto the powder pan when the trigger was pulled, igniting the powder and causing the bullet to fire.
Then came the wheellock and flintlock (bottom picture) guns that used flint against steel to create sparks that ignited the gunpowder. Most of these early firearms were smooth-bore which means the barrels were just simple metal tubes without rifling. Rifling is a spiral groove cut into the inside of the barrel that causes the bullet to spin, increasing the accuracy of the bullet.
This period also had an early form of a shotgun called a blunderbuss (had a flared muzzle that kind of looks like a trumpet). These were loaded with lead shot but could fire pretty much anything you could load into it.
The ammo that was used were simple lead balls or lead shot which consisted of lots of smaller lead balls.

The first patent for a "modern" shotgun was registered in 1878.

Repeating action guns came about in the mid 1800's and were made possible by cartridge ammunition (two types, rimfire and centerfire).

Lever action and revolvers were the first forms of repeating action guns with semi-automatic not far behind. The first automatic weapons were Gatling guns using during the Civil War.
Black powder rifles are still used today but they are fairly different than the original flintlocks. They use a primer to ignite the powder in the barrel and come as both muzzle loaders (load the powder and bullets from the muzzle end, tamping everything down the barrel with a ramrod) and breach loaders (the barrel breaks open and the bullet and powder are loaded from the breach end).
Next-Gen and smart weapons: companies are developing firearms that read the user's fingerprints and will only fire for the person whose prints it recognizes. There are also firearms in the works for police officers that have a chip in them that read a corresponding chip in the officer's badge so it will only fire from a certain angle. This is to prevent officers from being injured or killed with their own weapons.
Smart bullets are getting more into sci-fi territory. There are companies that are working on bullets that can change their trajectory mid-flight making it easier to account for wind and moving targets. Information gathering bullets are also being developed, making essentially "spy bullets" that can report back intel.

My biggest pet peeve when it comes to firearms in books and movies is when people use clip and magazine interchangeably. They are not the same thing. Their similarities stop at ammo delivery system. Saying they're the same is like saying wooden clogs and Manolo Blahnik stilettos are the same. Yes they both go on your feet but that's where the similarities end.
Clips (left picture) are a piece of metal that clamps ammo in place. They're usually used for WWI/WWII era military rifles. They can be used by inserting the whole thing into the chamber of the rifle and when all of the rounds are fired, the clip pops out the top or you would just line the clip up with the chamber, push the rounds into the gun, and pocket the clip.
Magazines are fully contained and use a spring under a plate to deliver round into the chamber, usually from the bottom of the chamber.

According to the ATF, long guns are firearms meant to be fired from the shoulder, legally having a barrel that is 18.5 inches or longer.
Unless you have a special license, it is illegal for people to have long guns with barrels that are shorter than 18.5 inches long.
There are two types of long guns: rifles (right three pictures), these shoot bullets and have a rifled barrel; and shotguns (left picture) that have a smooth bore barrel and shoot lead shot in a scatter pattern.
The ammo is not a hard rule. They do make shotshells for rifles, usually in rimfire calibers, they look like bullets full of sprinkles. They're primarily used for rattlesnakes and pigeons. You can also get slugs for shotguns, it's a good idea to get a rifled barrel for your shotgun if you plan on using slugs.
Optics vs iron sights- optics (scopes red dots) are used primarily on rifles that don't have iron sights like the top rifle on the right. The bottom two rifles both have iron sights which consist of a single post at the end of the barrel that you line up between the U-shaped sights towards the rear of the gun. Shotguns usually have a single bead sight at the end of the barrel, sometimes they have a second sight towards the rear of the gun.
"Sniper rifle" is not really a term used in the industry. A sniper is a person who is a well-trained shooter. Any rifle they use is a "sniper rifle." There is no gun that you can point at and say "that's a sniper rifle." In fact, the top rifle on the right is a Remington 700 and is one of the most popular guns snipers use. They do add special barrels, triggers, and amazing optics to increase their accuracy.
"Assault rifle" is another term not used in the industry.  It's usually applied to AR-15 style rifles. The AR actually stands for Armalite Rifle, Armalite being the company that developed the rifle. AR-15 is the specific model of the Armalite version but other companies make similar rifles but have different model names. Use terms like AR-style, modern sporting rifles (MSRs), or even black guns (comes from the fact that they're usually black, super advanced, I know).

Handguns are firearms that are meant to be fired using one or two hands, extended away from the body.
There are two types: pistols, the ammo is delivered by a magazine that is fitted into the grip (top two pictures; and revolvers, where the ammo is delivered from a revolving cylinder (bottom two pictures).
Glock and pistol are not synonymous. Glock is a handgun manufacturer in Austria who make one of the most popular handguns in the world.
Single action: you have to pull the hammer back to fire the gun (examples: 1911 first picture, replica 1841 revolver fourth picture)
Double action: revolver with no external hammer, usually on conceal carry guns like the Ruger J-frame style (third picture) so there's no hammer to get caught on clothing, purses, or holsters reducing the chance of misfiring
Single-double: revolvers that have hammers but can be fired with or without pulling the hammer back, without pulling the hammer back results in a long trigger pull, pulling the hammer back shortens the trigger pull.

Silencers don't exist.
Suppressors do. They do reduce the noise a firearm makes but it will still be loud, like a door slamming. You have to have a Class 3 license to purchase one.
A ton of movies and shows have a red dot showing up on somebody's chest or head, indicating that they are in a sniper's sights and are about to be killed. Snipers aren't going to use a laser sight. Snipers have two primary objectives: 1) kill their target; 2) don't give away their location. Lasers warn the target, giving them time to get out of the way and give away the sniper's location. You also have to sight lasers in like you do scopes. If you sight them in for 100 yards and try to shoot somebody at 50 yards by putting the laser on their chest, you'll shoot over their head.
Semi-Automatic: means you pull the trigger, a round is fired, the shell is ejected, and the next round is loaded into the chamber, then everything stops.
Automatic: pull the trigger, a round is fired, the shell is ejected, and the next round is loaded into the chamber, cycle continues until you release the trigger. Made for short bursts, too much use will burn up the barrel.
Machine gun: automatic weapon that is made for near-continuous use.
Automatic and machine guns are terrible for accuracy. There is a lot of lift when they're being fired and unless the user has great control over it, it'll be hard to actually hit something. They're made for suppressive fire or distracting the enemy. Their motto is accuracy through volume.
List of approximate capacities for different kinds of firearms. See the manufacturer's websites for accurate capacity for the gun you are using. There are plenty of after-market accessories that will increase capacities, ex: 30 round mag for a Glock 17 or a 50 round drum mag for a Ruger 10/22 rifle.

To make sure you are using the correct terminology (mag vs clip, etc).
History: make sure you are using firearms that are correct to the time period, don't want to be using a lever action rifle during the Revolutionary War.
Geography: some firearms are not accessible or allowed in parts of the world. Ex.: there is a ban on surplus military rifles (like Mosin Nagants or SKSs) being imported into the US so you can't find a new one in a store anymore.
Helps with realism. I read a book once about a French resistance group during WWII and I'm pretty sure the author didn't know any other guns that were used in WWII besides an Uzi (second picture) because every single person in the group used an Uzi. Resistance fighters would have pilfered their firearms anywhere they could find them. They were also supplied by the Allies so they would have used any combination of French, German, American, British, etc firearms
Glocks are one of the most popular handgun in the world because of its durability. It is used a lot by law enforcement agencies but it is not the only firearms used for service weapons. Many police departments get surplus military handguns and up until about 3 years ago that was the Beretta M9. The US military has since moved on to a Sig Sauer handgun that is a bit more versatile. Glocks are one of the only handguns that I have ever heard of that can be fired underwater but you'll only get one shot off before it's useless.
If you want a character to continuously pull the trigger and get that click-click-click effect that you see in a lot of movies once all of the bullets are fired, give them a revolver, not a pistol. A pistol slide will lock back (bottom picture) and while the trigger keeps moving, nothing else happens.
Range of accuracy: with the right caliber and the right shooter, a bullet can go a mile but it's a pretty tough feat. Meanwhile, a gun like a derringer (top picture) is accurate up to about 8 feet, it's meant to be shot across a poker table, you'll struggle to hit your target from across the street, although they do make them in higher calibers and longer barrels now that have increased their range of accuracy.

 Examples of genres where firearms are readily used.

With sci-fi weapons, it's really author's choice for how they work but having a basic understanding of how firearms operate will help make them more realistic.

 ATF website will give you federal regulations and some state regulations. They also have pamphlets and forms you can download.
Manufacturer websites give you specifics about their firearms.
Brownells sells afermarket accessories like magazines, optics, sights, grips, barrels, etc.
State law enforcement agencies will give you state firearm regulations. You used to be able to find these on the ATFs website but when gun regulations started changing very quickly, it's tough for them to keep up.
Other countries will have their own versions of the ATF where you can find their firearm regulations.
Local gun clubs/gun shops are a wealth of gun knowledge. It sounds like a stereotype but old gun guys love talking about guns. I used to work with a handful of them and had plenty of customers who fit in that category. They'll spend hours talking guns with you if you let them.
IMFDb lists firearms used in different movies, it's really great for sci-fi movies where they take real firearms and modify them to make them look more futuristic.

Please feel free to email or Facebook message me with any firearm questions you have and I'll answer what I can and point you in the right direction for the ones I can't.

So Right-Brained it's Painful

I did fairly well in math in school, I took AP biology in high school and passed. I scraped by my bio classes in college, did much better at geology, but I'll never be a scientist or a mathematician.

When I read legal or business language like in a contract or my insurance paperwork, my brain turns to static. Seriously, it's like it forgot how to exist.

Signal lost, end of the day's programming, super black hole.

To make matters worse, it's not just when I read it or hear it (sorry insurance lady who comes to work every year to explain our benefits, I didn't catch any of that), even thinking about it causes brain melt.

Why is this on a blog about writing and books and stuff?

Do you know how much legal/business stuff authors have to deal with? Especially self-published authors? I thought I knew.

I didn't.

I went to a workshop on tax info for authors at the last Nebraska Writers Guild spring conference. It was great, very informative, and gave me the illusion that I could easily handle the business side of this business.

Guys, I am so out of my league.

I started working on getting a tax id number. I didn't make it past the first page.

I figured I should get the handout the gentleman who ran the class gave us so I would have a guide through the process. The more I looked at it, the more static happened in my brain. There were numbers and percentages and form names and stuff. My brain shut down after overheating and hulksmashing the table.

The problem is, I think I have a fairly decent understanding of the pieces and parts of the whole giving the government it's cut thing, but when I try processing the entire thing is where I run into trouble.

I'll keep plugging away at it, chipping away at the little bits until the whole thing comes together... because it's figure it out or go to jail, I guess??

Thankfully, in my line of work, being overly right-brained is a good thing. In the meantime, I'm going to call the man who has all the answers to life's mysteries.

DAD!!