Lookitme, blogging again already.
Couldn’t think of a cute title, went with the date. Easy timesaver right there.

I really don’t want to spend energy & time griping about US politics or venting anxiety about way the world feels like it’s careened over a cliff into freefall. , but damn, it’s hard. I curate my news inputs to avoid much of the hyperbolic, self-referential, clickbait infotainment regurgitated by major US sources, but that only makes some trends and developments scarier.

Things I’m watching with unhappy expectations:

• bird flu, because it is going to get bad. Okay, yeah, it already is bad, but the demon is well & truly out of the bottle this time, so it’s going to get really, really bad. The only questions are when will things go from bad to contagion clusterfuck, and how ineffective will the medical response be. Fingers crossed the answer ends up being “we get lucky and the next pandemic gets pushed a few more years into the future.)

• COVID’s continued stealth assault on the health of millions. Bizarrely, many people seem to think that because Covid isn’t news, it isn’t dangerous, which is just…batshit bonkers. Long Covid disables millions after otherwise mild infections, sometimes permanently. And beyond that, new knock-on effects continue to be discovered in all age groups. But it’s complicated & depressing & doesn’t make for good clickbait, so it goes underreported.

• Speaking of Covid, I despise the way people in this country place sole responsibility for safety on individuals, rather than insisting on more effective institutional anti-contagion improvements like proper ventilation and lower occupancy limits. It’s all part of the larger cultural weirdness of insisting individual action is the only solution to problems.

• The Climate. I mean, it’s a toss-up whether the natural world as we know it still exists in a decade. Yeah, it could get that bad. Or not, but it’s never going back to “the way it was,” not in the next five lifetimes. And yet rich people still buy coastal real estate in Florida, FFS. I fear it’s going to take global famine and major infrastructure failures to get people in this country to take it seriously enough.

• World War 3. To be fair, the “world” has never stopped having wars, but I’m a history teacher’s daughter, I look at current events and I see future history. Since 2022, there’s been an escalation of conflicts in a lot of areas that seem to be pulling nation after nation into the mass destruction arena. I think we’re in a war that will only get recognized looking back at it. Or when someone starts dropping nukes. Which I really hope never happens. I don’t want to find out whether Nuclear Winter would make climate warming better or worse.

• The only other thing I’m gonna say about Armed Conflict is that the side that bombs hospitals, starves children, and invades other countries for “defensive” reasons is rarely on the right side of history. (Yes, I know, this means the US is one of the Bad Guys. We’ve been in the wrong on the international stage longer than I’ve been alive. Definitely since the ‘80s. We are not the only Evil Empire, but we are An Evil Empire.)

• Last and most fraught, politics. In a word, UGH. The best I can do is give money where I think it can help most, be vocal IRL about my stances on issues, and protect others wherever and whenever I can, when that becomes necessary. And, also, yes, keep writing my small stories about regular people who build small, bright joys together and carve out small peaceful havens from the chaos and trauma of their lives..

This post’s pictures: 1. batch two of this year’s Hibernation Cookies (ginger chews & sugar cookie slices with lots of sprinkles & colored sugar on top. 2. Pippin sitting on the dining room floor wearing the most “I am totally not the cat who just knocked cooling cookies on the floor” expression imaginable on his fuzzy face. 3. The adorable crocheted boba tea decoration sitting inside a protective boba cup, sitting atop the ordering screen at the boba tea place.

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