Feb 17: post convention week-plus
Once again, a week has rolled past and then some. I’m home tonight after an extra work shift, tucked into my blanket fort on the couch, well into season 9 of Stargate SG-1, with cookies and tea at hand and a cat purring nearby.
I’m doing lots of small spite-the-future live-for-today things like keeping the house temperature at decadently comfortable levels despite the polar vortex, eating treats that aren’t remotely healthy, and saying “fuck productivity,” at every opportunity.
These are my small acts of defiant joy, my personal defenses against an Outside World that is continuing its steep collapse into pure shittiness.
And yet somehow I’ve finally assembled a full first scene in my “I don’t know where it’s going but it makes me happy to noodle around with it” story idea.
AND I’m already a few false starts into a next scene already.
So that small thing feels good. I’m thinking of tossing a snippet onto Patreon, but I dunno. Opinions, anyone?
Other smol things going on:
I gained 20 followers on Amazon last month somehow. No idea how, but I do not question the happy boost.
I lurve my cozy, refreshed office space. I have extensively test-driven the new computer monitor set up, the window seat, the bean bag chair and my napping nook. Pippin has helped with the nap testing, naturally. All the space needs is a wee tiny table & chair for lunching, and it’ll be A Compleat Creative’s Workzone.
Stargate ruminations: My head canon is that Stargate SG-1 really ends a bit before the end of season 8 with the episode that ends up with the team fishing at O’Neill’s cabin. Season 9 & 10 are a different show with some of the same characters. I like it, but I can see why people who watched the show for SG-1 might have been disappointed. The dynamic took far too many episodes to set up. And it wasn’t helped by the way the show abandoned its successful plotting formula & flamboyant baddies for heavy reliance on callbacks to past characters multi-episode cliffhangers centering on drab, dour villains.
There’s a site called 5calls.org, and I wholeheartedly recommend it as a way to do the right thing when it comes to politics. It provides SCRIPTS for a bunch of issues. I do love a good script.
Things like 5 calls in 5 minutes helps me sleep better. Not because I believe it will “make a difference.” (I don’t.) Not because I think broadcasting what I believe will convince anyone else of anything. (It won’t.) But my conscience benefits from knowing I am trying in some small ways to keep doing the right thing.
A wee bit more of political venting, because it’s weighing on my mind.
The destruction of the US government is currently being done with legislative and executive tools, but they are potent ones, capable of global destructive power. I have zero faith their use won’t lead to the use of actual “boots on the ground, bombs in the air” warfare on US soil. 100% expectation of this coup developing into state-sponsored civil violence.
The cynical student of history side of me thinks it’ll be called police action against criminal elements, instead of “civil war” but that’s just putting modern fancy clothing on good old fashioned insurrection.
And that’s enough rant for one post. NO WAIT. One last bit: every single one of the Cabinet picks is a security disaster, but the RFK Jr pick is the one that scares me most, because too many people who really should know better somehow blind to how BONKERS he is.
He’s been spreading lies, ignorance, and straight-up grifts all over the internet for decades, and yet MAHA moms, “health influencers,” and gullible fools lap up his every word like it’s snake oil kombucha.
He’s already floating the idea of fucking reeducation camps, FFS. I bet some of these folks who believed he was a good choice to head up HHS because he’s against artificial food coloring are the same ones who said my Rollover worldbuild was unrealistic for having American interment camps. Grrr. (Yes, I’m still salty about that particular criticism. Will be salty about it forever.)
Okay, that’s it. And now, OBLIGATORY CAT PICS! Pippin claims the people food on the table belongs to him: a story in 3 panels. (Pippin sees food. Pippin wants food. Pippin lunges for food.) Sorry they're a bit blurry, the room was dark.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)