As many are aware, I live far out in the Kentucky woods on 100 acres of wild forest in a log cabin I designed and built. From the get-go, I have wondered why there are trees of several types that mysteriously start bending, usually a few feet up the trunk, and continue or even twist as they grow larger. Examples:
Sure, if a new tree is growing on a hill or monkeys start swinging on them, they’ll bend. These don’t fall into either category. There are many more around here, too. So why this Shag Bark Hickory or that Post Oak? Mystery indeed!
A while back, I published a series of books called ‘Take-A-Break Shorts’. They each have a few short stories, grouped by the type of story; about a dozen eBooks at only $0.99. There’s a story, a sci-fi answer set at the end of the Civil War called The Curiously Curved Trees. Read the whole story here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085161BHG/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p2_i5
Trying to keep busy sewing dresses, skirts, jackets
or painting on canvas
Weeding the garden
Making bread, yogurt, cookies
Writing…
Job ripped from me, no friends, no pay, alone
Reason for eating regularly?
Reason to keep my heart beating?
Reason to imagine soaring sheep?
Sheep bleating in the clouds – yes, I could pull another crazed story from my brain. Forget it.
Today? Cozy in my homemade jammies and housecoat, what about today? Get dressed!
Too much sewn , I don’t need more bread or yogurt, nowhere too hang anymore paintings, all outside is dormant. Another story or book? Nobody reads them, so why?
In the early morning sun’s shadows, I walk to the end of the long gravel driveway and see the wild yellow narcissus plants budded out. I look closer. Many new ones, the established ones have big, tinted buds, and there! There are a few in bloom! Spring’s grand harbinger! Possible hope? Barky nudges my knee for a pat and wags her tail.
Lots of newbies!The sunniest spot blooms firstWill rise more as the day progressesBuddies surrounded by briars…that’s lifeThe promise of Spring!
HURRAY! I got my newest book published and available on Amazon! So far just in print, working on the eBook. In short, the Alefinna is a standard biped ET outfit that roams the galaxy looking for customers and sellers for the Galactic Hub. The Hub is the nexus for trade, entertainment, communications and any other activities to share among the solar systems. They invite a strange group aboard to discuss joining, but the strangers instead blast their navigation systems thoroughly with acid. The Alefinna barely land in one piece in the U of L football field.
Cardinal Stadium, Where the Alefinna Spaceship Landed!
From there onward is a study in how different parts of Earth social fabric assess and treat these ‘Galactics’. To complicate things, one of the crew (Dez) had been to Earth before as a surveyor. The idea was to measure the love and light index and the things that make Earthies unique. In the early 1960s US, L&L looked great with the big peace movements. In the 1980s much had changed; all but his love for his 1960s sweetheart. He did not know that liaison resulted in a daughter.
How would NASA respond? Ultraconservative haters? University Astrophysics majors all over the globe? Governments around the world, especially when the Alefinna offer the US high-level technology to build a repair facility for them. Is your mind spinning with widely varied reactions already? Read how our ambassador spins the story at the United Nation meetings.
I listen to PBS in the mornings and this morning, I heard an entire show looking into the new nuclear power plants. Are we finally going to admit that nuke power has a strategic place in managing our chaotic climate? As noted in recent posts, I joined the US Navy nuclear machinist program in my teens!
I live in the most beautiful yet most filthy state in the US: Kentucky. The birds, trees, flowers, rivers, the entire state could be a natural haven. Except that for over a hundred years Kentucky has jabbed and stabbed nature with deep coal mines and worse, the open strip mines where gigantic monster bulldozers scrape entire forests and the wildlife away to get to that coal. This is all over the state, not just the eastern Appalachian part.
Where I live in western Ky between Owensboro and Bowling Green there were two strip mines that were much too close; I passed them going to college, the store. One in Hartford, one in Paradise. Remember the song? “Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green River where Paradise lay? I’m sorry my son, you’re too late in asking; Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.” – John Prine. He gets into gory details, too.
The nuke power we know was based on the US Navy Admiral Rickover’s new submarines that could stay out for months at a time without refueling, submarines that went under the Arctic ice cap. That was revolutionary for our military.
USS Nautilus, 1st Nuke Submarine
I got out and worked at San Onofre, the three-reactor site in San Luis Obispo, California. I worked in the reactor compartments, around the waste, doing repairs, I wrote in the newsletter, planned high radiation jobs. I got an award for my high rad work planning article in the Nuclear News, the industry magazine. I worked in on-site drills for nuke safety with four area hospital emergency rooms.
Waste was the biggest issue. Now the tech is ready to not only make a TMI event impossible but also not add to the hidden piles of high rad waste deep in the Rockies and elsewhere. In my Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventure series, the colony planet of Tenembras would not have survived without the nuke plant that made the oxygen for them to breathe as the planet was populated with no live ecology. Dissidents were dumped there to die but the nuke plant was integral not only for O2 production but in getting galactic aide as well. Here’s a coffee cup I designed and had made at Zazzle back then:
My Keep-It-Hot Coffee Cup!
Nuke power was dangerous but I worked it anyway. The new tech is not. Let the new tech nuke power team up with the solar, wind, hydro and other accepted power sources that cannot provide the amount of energy the new nukes can. The new nukes need to be part of the future’s energy mix.
I thought I might share a story I recently submitted to a writer’s contest:
SIREN BAY
Kinja gazed hungrily at the glinting water. No one came this far, no one crossed the safety barriers. She shed her long-sleeved shirt and long pants and folded them atop her slip-ons that had her socks tucked inside. The mean sun burned her tender skin. Treatments from her last secret dive had taken five weeks of caustic scrubs and she’d had the runs all that time as well. She’d heard sirens would lure sailors into the water and drown them. Silly myth, yet she felt the beat of a siren’s heart within her breast; the water called her home.
The puny overhang couldn’t be called a cliff. Kinja remembered seeing the Acapulco cliff diver arrowing into the sapphire waters once, back on Earth. Even then they’d said the cliff seemed puny compared to the days of lower seas, when a sprawling city surrounded the area. She remembered the sound of applause out there, a mere breeze compared to the gale-force acclaim she’d won at the Toronto Open.
If a bird flew by she’d leap after it. No birds. If a dolphin breached and squeaked, she’d dive in to meet it. No dolphins. Terraforming lagged on most everything. Toes on the crumbling edge, she felt the gray regolith sink beneath her feet. Rather than fall, she’d best dive, dolphin or not.
As she sliced into the warm water, her brain reveled in the flight, in the contact, in the sensation of weightless gliding. Flexing her thin form, she angled to the surface. The algae mats topped the sea as far as she could see, horizon east to west, so no swimming from her lagoon. A soft, swift current thrilled her from her legs up. The lighter gravity made swimming harder; she found simple one arm then the other, kick, kick worked most effectively.
At the sharp rocks at the lagoon mouth, she kicked off a flat surface and raced as fast as her muscles and lungs could manage all the way to the low beach at the diagonal. Climbing out on her knees, black shoes appeared before her happy eyes. Her heart fell and she flipped over onto the hot sand.
“You knew better and did it anyway. I sympathize but you know the hazard from the bio-package we seeded the sea with, and the consequences.” Her father dropped her stack of clothes and shoes beside her. “Get dressed; you know where we’re going.”
The scrub was deemed too risky so soon after the last time. They put her into the Conditioning Chamber. She occasionally perceived faces surrounding the translucent bubble but heard nothing. The chamber had been used once before – the guy had gone crazy and they couldn’t attend to his heart attack in time. The unending tickling, the feeling of millions of fire ants crawling around on her bare skin to remove the tenacious accelerated growth enzymes and seeds did not bother her. She put herself in the 2115 Olympic Trials and re-swam each precious stroke in her mind. The surge in her heart when she realized her hand hit the bar a full second before her rival’s kept her skin peels and regeneration far, far away. The golden trophy weighed less that you’d think. She’d hugged it then and she felt the smooth, cool thing against her breastbone. She got out of the Chamber tender and weak on her eighteenth birthday.
They fitted her out with a collar that would give her a severe shock if she even went near the safety barriers. She bent her mind to making this alien sea her friend.
***
As the top scientist for oceanic life genesis she finally succeeded with her decade-long project. She savored the congratulations from the entire community. She walked up to her father with a pair of side nippers. He clipped her collar with a grin. She stood before them and gave her many thanks to all those who’d accepted her single-minded attack on the terraforming problems and had assisted her efforts so ably. At 31 she’d earned her right to say, “Sign up for swimming lessons first thing tomorrow. If you want me today, I’ll be in Siren Bay.”
An Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventure – Where Do You Stand?
Tolerance toward strangers versus Kill’em!
‘Love your Neighbor’ no matter how distant versus ‘Hate the Sumbitches!’
Do you prefer characters who behave like real people? Like when there’s a crisis with plans and solutions being bandied and they turn to you for your erudite opinion…and you’re thinking of which color of M&Ms you like best?
Nearly all reputable scientists agree that human-caused Climate Change is a real danger with Big Oil pulling the strings. Think of the situation 100 years from now:
As Greenland and the Arctic melt, sea levels will rise to the point the mega-cities on the coasts of every continent will be underwater, no more Bangladesh…or Bronx.
In the US it is easy to imagine the millions of coastal HAVES will push out the Midwestern HAVE NOTS. So where will the Have Nots go? Rafts on the high seas?
Is it not reasonable to think the US government would go authoritarian to combat the chaos and maintain order? And extend borders from Pole to Pole for more natural resourcesnational security?
If NASA stays on track, we sure could have colony planets light years away. Where better to send the poor, the displaced and the ‘malcontents’? “Out of sight…”
Finally, Elise t’Hoot is an illegal refugee going to college in Kentucky. Her scholarships are pulled so she needs cash for tuition. One thing leads to another. Such a girl CAN save not only this world, but others way out there as well. Perseverance, smarts, tolerance, faith in the power of love, and the gut feeling that her terrifying experiences like gang rape, family deaths and mass starvation need not be perpetuated because of caste or color, or what planet, they’re from – these are what make her strong.
Forget the label “Sci-Fi”, this series is about looking around without denial. The Earth is in dire straits with fossil fuels as the main cause and will get worse in the coming decades. Nobody you see or hear news about is worth more or less than you. Some people are capable of amazing generosity and love while some are capable of monstrous evil and outright depravity. A skinny illegal girl with pain and flaws CAN make a heap big difference to the ‘system’.
Disclaimer: The Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventure is a true adventure with a wide variety of characters with wildly differing viewpoints. The winding and intertwining stories move fast and offer lots of surprises. There is technical wonder, winning and losing, suspense, violence and pity, even some well spaced-out romance (pun intended). Elise believes much as the author does, but she’s not so pedantic and most of the characters disagree a little or lots, sometimes with gunshots. They have their own problems and beliefs, you know? The environment of the colony planet of Tenembras is harsh enough to polarize the population with regard to aliens. That would be non-Humans, not just those considered to be sub-Humans. Couldn’t happen on Earth…
The Might of Defiance, Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventure Book One by Mary Ellen Wall
Available quite soon at Amazon and other outlets for not much $$$ at all.
Only nine more volumes to go! If you’ve read this far you really must give the books a try J.
Oh yes, isn’t is getting cold in the evenings! I’ve had to dig around for my sweaters, coats and long johns and all…cheapskate that I am, I keep the thermostat at 50 degrees F and pile on the warmth. That’s better than 40 degrees like I did 2006 though 2014. Getting soft? The cats seem to like me much better now.
I got an armload of fake fur and thick fleece to make toasty stuff with, and I committed to brings several kinds of cookies to the holiday potluck at work next week. Should I make the Irish Stout next or the Hard Cider? When I’m not sewing or painting or baking or brewing or reading, I could be writing. Here’s the 3rd in the series. They cost a lot less than dry roasted peanuts; why not give them a try?
“No, I don’t have an appointment. All I need to do is check the seismometers; there are twenty two here and it won’t take but a few minutes for each.”
Tape sized the guy up. He did look like the wiry volcano guy, chocolate dark with very large eyes and a stubby nose, and that superlative girl with the blonde burr had been with him in the net interview. He keyed his comm, “Artemis, wherefore art thou, Artemis?”
“Cut it out, Cusak. What’s up?”
“Got volcano people out here wanting to check their shake-o-meters.”
“In the middle of the night? Where do they need to go?”
Tape turned back to the visitors. “Where are they?”
Mort tapped on the legend on the map Tape showed him. “See these red dots and triangles?”
“Arty, they need the whole perimeter and some central.”
“Nope, sorry. The research in Dome 5 shall not be disturbed by order of the Grand Poobah, nothing in central admin, otherwise looks okay.” She cut the comm.
Tape reacted to Kathy’s discontent; he had a thing for blue-eyed blonde Amazons. “Guys, how about we start checking here and work around to 20, the farthest one? We’ll see how much we can get done in a day. Or a night as it were? Perchance the central area will be available in dawn’s early light?”
Mort and Kathy shrugged at each other and shouldered their satchels. Mort said, “Lead on! We’ll knock out what we can and straight on through ’til morning!”
“Mort, I will donate my lunch money every day if I can get our satellite link-up fixed for Christmas.” Kathy reiterated the common grad student complaint, knowing full well Mort lobbied for it monthly. A new sat was promised on the last bus, but of course nothing came of that.
Tape walked back over to the guard shack and tapped the window, waking Birko. “Can you handle the grueling task before you alone? Can you threaten the impudent scoundrels that may creepeth up?”
The portly Slavic woman scowled at him. “Beat it, and bring back a fresh jug of water. Somebody slobbered in this one.”
After checking the first nearby box, Tape led them to a buggy and they all climbed in. He took the long way around to avoid the area around the proscribed Dome 5, though he knew the tree-people retired at night and wouldn’t be noticeable.
Kathy asked, “Scenic route?”
“Yes ma’am, Tape Tours, at your service; do note the amazing star field, featuring the despicable Blackie with Misha on his heels to save us all. So why are you here so late?”
“We didn’t get up until afternoon and gotta get it done,” she replied. “There are over 400 seismometers and we’re one of four teams checking them. Stop here!” She jumped out with Mort and they trotted to the fence. He went one way and she the other with their case keys at the ready. Case open, scan data, case close and lock.
They stopped eight more times checking two multiple-instrument stations at a time until they neared the last dome of the big circle.
Mort said, “We have two big old-style units inside this one, if you don’t mind, originals.”
Tape slammed on the brakes and swung the rear end around so the headlights shone on the outside door of the huge Dome 20. “Here we are!”
“I see that,” she told him flatly, clearly not appreciating his driving skills. “Can you let us in?”
Inside they saw a vast field of soybeans and one tree. Tape hit the switch that turned on every third light.
“What an odd tree! Mort, look at this, I’ve never seen anything like it!”
They walked over to it. “Kath, I haven’t either.” He slid his hand up the smooth, glossy truck. “It’s tall for the diameter, and the bark is extraordinary, about my tone but shiny.”
“LeeLaa is not a tree.”
Mort and Kathy jumped back to Tape who stood stock still, glued in place from consternation. Tape knew there were alien things in Dome 5, but this one had escaped. He trotted back to the entry and switched on the rest of the lights. He looked around the rest of the dome once more to verify there were no other ‘trees’.
“Not worry. LeeLaa good. LeeLaa go walk and think about maybes.”
Kathy came timidly nearer. “You are called LeeLaa?”
“Yes. Your name is?”
“K-Kathy.”
“Kakathy.”
“No, sorry, plain old Kathy. Ka-thy. And that’s Mort.”
Mort waved and moved up with Kathy.
“Hi Kathy Hi Mort. Hey Tape why worry?”
He gulped. “No reason at all.” Pleased she knew his name, he smiled and decided to stay put. A vestibule door banged open, making all the humans jump and gawk at the old man racing in from 30 or 40 meters away.
“What are you people doing in my dome! LeeLaa! We’ve been looking all over for you! Do you have any idea how big this dome complex is? Tape, what in blazes is going on here?”
“Dr. Cartier, come on, don’t yell. The little one there took a stroll about the premises.”
Kreeek, TaaTaa and LeeLaa, acrylic on canvas by Mary Ellen Wall
Tape thought fast about ways to explain letting strangers in the Dome at night without asking him first. “Dr. Cartier, sir, it was urgent these volcanologists access their seismographs in here as soon as possible. I asked Artemis and she said to avoid Dome 5 and points central, so we checked the perimeter stations and came here for the last ones, except central.”
Alain turn to Kathy and Mort tersely asking, “Hello, Volcanologists One and Two. Do you have names?”
“Aalen, names Kathy and Mort,” LeeLaa piped.
“Dr. Alain Cartier, I take it.” Mort stuck his hand out to Alain, who belatedly accepted it. “I hate breaking in like this; Sarjani gave us permission for come in and check our stuff at any time.”
“Forgive me Dr. Abernathy, I did not mean to be rude. The situation has changed and you have inadvertently discovered the reason why.” Alain remembered the newscasts of the great eruption that featured these two experts, and shook Kathy’s hand more readily. “Miss Abramowitz. College kids have been sneaking up.”
“Grand to meet you and your other guest,” she said jokingly, “things have changed!” She whipped around as the vestibule door banged open again, hanging on to Alain’s hand and pulling him so briskly he fell onto her. They righted themselves as LeeLaa whizzed by to embrace the newest arrival.
Tape saw another guy come in from the vestibule behind Elise. She outpaced the man because he caught sight of the point-blank alien and skidded to a stop, statue-like, maybe striving to blend into the bushy greenery in his white suit, staring at LeeLaa who called, “Martaa!” Tape judged that although it looked like the girl he knew as Elise was being engulfed by tentacles, she seemed to be enjoying it. Curiouser and curiouser.
The girl, Elise and/or Marta, stepped back and stood like the subject of an interrogation, facing the assembled humans. “Hi, y’all. LeeLaa, everybody, meet Ricky.” In her higher voice she looked aside to LeeLaa and said, “Many people like this say ‘party'”
LeeLaa said, “Martaa, Alain, Mort, Kathy, Tape, Ricky party! New friends! Make tea!”
Alain pinched at his forehead and went over to pat the still gaping Ricky on the shoulder. He slid his hand down to Ricky’s arm and tugged him around the stars of the show to where Mort and Kathy stood close to each other.
Tape, having overcome his immediate alarm, decided this could be educational, especially since the alien’s guardian angel was now present. He announced, “I can make the tea, but we ought to go to the lunchroom, don’t you think, sir?”
An excerpt from An Uncivil War, the Lastest and Greatst Sci-Fi novel with Elise and the tree-like aliens. Launching this month – watch for it!
Yippee! I got the Kindle Creator Beta Kindle Direct Publishing to convert the eBook version I went over with ProWriting Aid ( https://prowritingaid.com) and formatted with The Book Designerinterior template and cover template and got the book accepted on Kindle!
For eBooks to everybody except Amazon, I’m going with Pronoun ( https://pronoun.com/). I used Jutoh ( http://www.jutoh.com/index.htm) to convert my interior files to EPUB and do the verification check…it took me a while to get it adjusted right and fix the errors (EPUB doesn’t like ANY dashes). And cover files, boy have I been ’round and ’round with the cover files being high enough DPI, low enough kbytes, good enough resolution on all elements and even the proper physical dimensions.
Speaking of cover mayhem, I got Ingram Spark (ingramspark.com) to accept my cover changes and VIOLA! VIOLET! VOILA! Sentimental me, I put the eBooks on instant sale but the print version doesn’t go live until my birthday on July 9th.
I have learned just about enough to bust open in the last few months – good thing I have a good sewing machine. Now that I’ve bought and downloaded and learned and studied more, I should be able to get the next volumes of the series on the billboard much more efficiently. BTW I think each subsequent book is brighter than the sparkling gem that went before it.
What could go wrong now? I already bought a boatload of ISBNs from Bowker (http://www.myidentifiers.com) and have the Library of Congress as a favorite. I have the templates for formatting and the lifelong subscription to the editing program. Oh crap, I didn’t knock on wood….
Your EPCN application for a Library of Congress control number for
Title: “The might of defiance”
ISBN: “1945937009”
was successfully transmitted to the Library of Congress.
Instead of cleaning up the cabin as I planned to do and really intended to do, I have been writing more Otto and Socks stories. It’s slow going, especially when I deviate from the outline for the series. How can I not let the characters do what they want? I can’t force them, bend them to my will. Now I have to see if I can merge then latest one back into the outlined sequence.
With that frustration, I went out to enjoy the sunshine. I looked up the ridge behind the house and the image of a tiny cabin part way up popped into my head. I pictured the wide steps leading up to it. How would I get electricity up there? With juice, I could move my audio recording up there and Ma’s radio would never interfere again! I am on the edge of phone reception that far up (not at the cabin!) and could do even better with a 4G antenna for WiFi! Then I could have internet, which I need to upload books to Abe Books. Did I mention I have a storefront there? ‘Old Lady Who?’ is the name, and is something I can do with a few hundred of my excess books. It would be great for uploading manuscripts, voiceover recordings, looking up references and tutorials!
Glancing back at the cabin, I noted the front gutter and the facing board it is hooked to are falling off. I am plagued by big fat boring bees. The well needs a protective shed, and has needed it for a couple decades. I looked back up the hill and the mini-cabin, the steps and the antenna had vanished. The concrete barrier to keep the ridge from encroaching on the back porch collapsed. I can’t turn on the front porch light because it trips the freezer circuit. The garage doors don’t work without brute force.
I wonder how much it would cost to build that little cabin-ette studio marvel?
Oh yes, isn’t is getting cold in the evenings! I’ve had to dig around for my sweaters, coats and long johns and all…cheapskate that I am, I keep the thermostat at 50 degrees F and pile on the warmth. That’s better than 40 degrees like I did 2006 though 2014. Getting soft? The cats seem to like me much better now.
An excerpt from 
version I went over with ProWriting Aid ( https://prowritingaid.com) and formatted with 
interior template and cover template and got the book accepted on Kindle!
Otto and Socks stories. It’s slow going, especially when I deviate from the outline for the series. How can I not let the characters do what they want? I can’t force them, bend them to my will. Now I have to see if I can merge then latest one back into the outlined sequence.
WiFi! Then I could have internet, which I need to upload books to Abe Books. Did I mention I have a storefront there? ‘Old Lady Who?’ is the name, and is something I can do with a few hundred of my excess books. It would be great for uploading manuscripts, voiceover recordings, looking up references and tutorials!
How Would You Do It? 