Bursting the bubble

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Each of us has routines we follow. We go to the same stores. Talk to the same people. Listen to the same news sources.

Without meaning to, we create a bubble in which to live.

That’s not so bad for some people, but for more than a year and a half, I’ve been trapped in a Seattle bubble. You know Seattle, home of the ‘Summer of Love’ fiasco.

And it’s not just incompetent local government we have here. King Inslee, tyrant that he is, has used the threat of Covid-19 to shut down businesses, close schools, force citizens to wears masks, and break apart friends and families.

He’s done everything in his power (and quite a bit past what is legally in a governor’s power) to force the entire population of Washington state to live in constant fear. It’s obvious to me that his goal is to grasp power by destabilizing our society. A common practice used by communist dictators.

Go figure.

Unfortunately, people in my area can’t see what he’s doing. Either that, or they don’t care. The result is that Seattle has become a dystopian world full of mandates, masks, and tyrannical officials who feel they have the right to dictate how each person lives.

Bleh!

A few weeks ago, I realized that I hadn’t visited my mother in quite a while. I wanted to remedy that. But since the few attempts to wear a mask had left me faint and gasping for air in a few short minutes, I knew that flying was out.

I could see the headlines if I attempted a plane trip. “Woman arrested for taking off mask on plane. Claims she couldn’t breathe are unsubstantiated.”

Yep. That wouldn’t be fun.

So, even though we knew we only had a short window to complete our trip, my daughter and I loaded up our car and drove across the country.

It was quite an adventure.

We left Washington on a Wednesday, and got back home a week and a half later on a Sunday. We drove more than 6000 miles and saw the following states. (My librarian self demands that I put the states in alphabetical order.)

Alabama
Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Oklahoma
Oregon
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Wyoming

What a long, tiring, glorious trip!

America is undeniably a beautiful country!
Flying over it does NOT do it justice.

By the way, I’m happy to report that most of the country is going about their day, free of the fear that dystopian Seattle lives under. Few or no masks on the streets, in the stores, or in restaurants. And certainly no vaccine passports to get into anywhere.

The bubble is burst. No matter what the media claims, I’ve seen the truth for myself.

Normal is normal, there is no new about it. When people don’t bow down to tyranny, tyranny fails.

Hope exists and is strong. It thrives in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans across the country. Those who don’t live in states governed by tyrants like King Inslee live their lives without masks, without vaccine passports, and without unnecessary fear.

I’ve felt freedom. Real freedom. It was in the wind that blew through my hair. In the movement of the clouds as they danced across an infinite sky. In the wide, open spaces of the never-ending prairies, rolling hills, majestic mountains, and winding rivers.

I was surrounded by freedom. It felt good. But more importantly, it felt right.

Which has brought me to a decision. No matter where I am, I am never, ever, going back into that nasty, stinky, dystopian bubble where tyrants feel they have the right to mandate what I do with my life.

I have created a new bubble. A bubble of freedom.

The only mandate I plan to follow is the mandate to end tyranny.


The short

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The more I know about making a movie, the better I’ll be at writing one. So, I challenged myself to do a short.

I talked a couple of kids (family members) into being my actors and wrote a short I hoped they’d enjoy making. I knew I’d have to direct it myself, but then realized I’d also have to handle the editing of the final project.

A short suddenly seemed a huge thing to do, overwhelming even. But what kind of challenge would it be if it was easy? I pushed on.

I was fortunate enough to rope one more person onto the crew. A sweet, intelligent young woman (my daughter) agreed to do the camera work.

In an effort to make it easy, I choose as a location a large, easy to access, public park.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
Public parks, particularly those used by seaplanes, are excessively noisy.
It is a little know fact that marching bands practice in public parks.
People actually do walk up to strangers in public parks and ask, “What are you doing?”
The microphone on my smart phone is too weak for filming, so an external microphone is necessary.
Lavalier microphones work great but are a pain to place correctly, particularly if they need to be hidden.
It is necessary for the director to check that a microphone is turned on.
Filming uses up the battery of a smart phone ridiculously fast.
Working with children, as sweet as they are, has its own challenges.
Choosing editing software is a grueling chore and takes much longer than expected.
Learning to use said software takes even longer.
Directing is a skill I have yet to master.
The weather doesn’t always cooperate.
Patience is key!

School starts up in a couple of weeks and my actors will be very busy. Meanwhile, there’s still three scenes to shoot and sound issues to resolve.

Wish me luck!

Happy Father’s Day!

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To the wonderful men who
work hard,
sacrifice,
kiss boo-boos,
hug away fears,
play silly kid games even when they’re too tired to think,
read bedtime stories,
build forts,
clean up messes,
and a million other things dads are asked to do every day.

We see you. And thank you.

What you’re doing makes the world a much better place!

Happy Father’s Day!

Challenge for a change

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I like change. Perhaps too much. Sometimes I wonder if my family thinks I’m an uncomfortable person to be around.

Take for example, my furniture. I can’t help but rearrange it. Often. As much as I try to resist the urge, the urge to rearrange always wins.

And then there are new ideas and theories that cross my path. It doesn’t matter if the subject is science, politics, religion, history, physics, or whatever, before I know what’s happening, I’m deep in a rabbit hole, researching every angle.

I won’t even mention my inability to follow recipes. I always change those.

So, yeah, I not only like change, I crave it.

Yet as a full-time writer, the only way I’ll ever get anything done is to follow a routine. And to make sure I get work done, my routine looks the same every day. Every day I write, or rewrite, or edit, or proofread. Then I do it all again.

If I’m not careful, the routine could morph into boredom. Which would be disastrous, because no one wants to read what a bored writer writes.

So to mix things up, I set challenges for myself. Early on, the challenge was to shift back and forth between screenwriting and novel writing.

Recently, I set a timed challenge for myself. I wrote a screenplay (True Story of the Perfect 36) and adapted it into a novel, all in the space of a single year. I’m kinda proud of being able to do that. It certainly wasn’t easy, and I feel both the screenplay and novel turned out well.

Then last summer I challenged myself to write a Christmas thriller screenplay, which is how I came to write Minerva Claus.

The screenplay I wrote before that, Paranormal Rescue, was also the result of a challenge. I wanted to know if I could write a horror. I turned into a horror/comedy, but hey, a horror/comedy is still a horror.

My most recent challenge was to adapt six screenplays into novels. I even went so far as to rewrite one of them, Stone Woman, to the point it’s nearly ready to be published.

Which left me ready for a new challenge.

Then it hit me.

I’d write two separate screenplays, concurrently. To beat the challenge I’d have to write them in such a way that I honestly would not be able to say which screenplay is finished first.

It’s turning out to be much harder than expected. Just like any good challenge.

I suffered through two weeks of not being able to write anything. Then, yesterday, I had a breakthrough. The spigot of creativity turned back on and ideas once again began to flow.

Whew! That was close. For a moment I thought this challenge was going to be too much for me.

To mothers who:

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  • Stay up late to wash clothes
  • Get up early to make school lunches
  • Study higher math because you want to be able to help with homework
  • Pretend ignorance so your child can be a teacher
  • Listen to problems, but don’t always offer solutions
  • Bandage cuts
  • Kiss boo-boos
  • Hug away blues
  • Assign chores
  • Secretly redo chores in the middle of the night
  • Read bedtime stories without falling asleep
  • Fall asleep while reading bedtime stories
  • Share family history
  • Watch kid shows
  • Push aside personal wants for the sake of your child

And the millions of other things mothers do each and every day. Your hard work makes little humans into the best kind of big humans.

You have the MOST IMPORTANT JOB ON THE PLANET. And the greatest!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Virtual logic

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“Mommy, Sari said her parents are essential and you’re not.”

“What?” I sputtered, shocked at the words coming out of my seven-year-old’s mouth. I put down the knife I had been using to chop potatoes and turned to face my child. She was the very picture of doe-eyed innocence, which made me suspicious. Less than a week ago I had peeked into her room and had seen her, in front of her mirror, trying out different innocent looks.

I took a deep breath to calm myself before using the time-honored brow-raise method to request more information.

“Sari, she’s in my class,” the munchkin explained in response. “She said her parents are important and you aren’t.”

I blinked several times as I thought through that statement. I knew many, if not all children, were having a tough time with virtual learning. It wouldn’t be the first time a child used bragging as a coping mechanism.

“Is Sari the pale girl with red hair?” I asked, as I mentally ran through the list of my daughter’s classmates.

“No, that’s Sara. I don’t know what Sari looks like. She says cameras make her twitch and she doesn’t like to twitch so no one is allowed to ask her to turn it on. She uses a drawing of a turtle instead.”

Instantly, a picture formed in my head. It was of a bratty girl, used to getting what she wants, when she wants it. A bully in the making, who would, of course, be frustrated that online school made it harder for her to gain full ascendency over her classmates.

“Does anyone call her turtle girl?” I asked, honestly curious.

“That would be bullying, Mommy,” my daughter answered with a roll of her eyes. “That’s not allowed.”

“But it’s okay to tell people their parents aren’t essential?”

“We’re studying history,” my youngster explained, and this time I could tell her doe-eyes were sincere. “Teacher said some people being essential and some not is a fact, so it’s okay.”

“I love you, munchkin!” I said as I pulled my little daughter into a hug. “But we need to talk.”

She was only seven, but she was smart.  With a little patience, I knew I could help her understand the difference between virtual logic, and logic based on reality.

An important task for any parent.

Not essential. Not likely!

Treasure Trove excerpt

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I’ve adapted Treasure Trove, a quirky sci-fi script in which two sisters rush around an amusement park as they thwart a budding robot apocalypse.

This is the beginning scene, but it’s a rough adaptation. Whatever I thought of while I was fixing the format ended up on the page, and I haven’t had time to do any rewrites yet. Who knows how it’ll change by the time it’s massaged into something that truly resembles a book.

“I can do this,” Audrey whispered.

At least, Audrey thought of it as a whisper. In reality, it was something else entirely. Whisper implied speech, the actual formation of words. To form words required action, which, in Audrey’s current state of mind, was a rare occurrence.

Instead, what Audrey had done was allow a fragment of each word to escape from her mouth as she breathed. Then, of their own violation, those fractions surfed Audrey’s exhaled breath like dolphins surfing the crest of a big wave. The result was a whisper of a whisper of a whisper. It had required no effort on Audrey’s part at all and was entirely too insubstantial to be heard by the human ear.

Which, if Audrey had had the energy to think about it, was fine by her. The last thing she wanted was for someone to hear her. Because even as whisps of air, those words were a lie.

She could not do it. She was nearly incapable of doing anything.

When it came to confidence, Audrey had hit rock bottom ages ago. She had no confidence whatsoever. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

For the past few years everything she tried had turned to do had ended. Sometimes in failure, but more often than not, it had simply been left unfinished. It was impossible to remember the last time she had been able to complete anything.

To the outside world she was twenty, smart, and could look forward to a great career when she finished college. To the outside world she should not have a care in the world.

Obviously, the outside world knew nothing about reality. Because here she was, her head against the door of the exam room she had just left, wondering if the heart-to-heart she had had with her doctor had been a waste of time. He wanted to put her on some pills that he claimed would help her control her depression and anxiety.

As if drugs could make her a success.

Take care!