The Trouble With Trust

People want to trust the people they love. But what do you do when that trust is broken? I saw a meme that said trust is like chocolate. When it's broken, you can melt it back together, but it's never as perfect as it was before.

There's an old saying Scotty quoted once on the original Star Trek, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." I guess I need a double dose of shame because I've been fooled by the same person several times now.

The first time my trust was broken by this person, I melted the chocolate back together. Maybe I shouldn't have. The second time, I left it broken. The third time, it crumbled. This time it's gone. I literally haven't got any more left. To abandon the chocolate metaphor, it's like I built a stone castle. It got ground into sand, and now I can't get the sand to stick together again.

Trust is fragile and precious. Once broken, it never completely heals. If you have someone's trust, treasure it. If you've broken it, don't blame them for trusting you. It isn't their fault for trusting, it's yours for proving yourself to not be trustworthy.

Thornyrose Books

After quite a hiatus, I'm getting the writing in gear. I have three unpublished finished novels, and I'm going ahead with self-publishing. I am an indie author. At the age of 60 I no longer have time for the slow grind of the traditional publishing process.

My romantic fantasy, Grove Secrets, will be out in both print and e-book on Amazon.com sometime next week. After 90 days as a Kindle exclusive, I'll put it on Smashwords. I am also going to check Book Bub. It looks like a decent venue for indie authors.

As Home Again, Reb Dexter's Last Concert, and Like a Single Cell have been Kindle exclusive for more than 90 days, I'll be uploading them to Smashwords soon. Smashwords, by the way, will put the books onto Barnes and Noble for me, so they'll be available as ebooks for Nook soon after.

In a month or two, I'll release For the Seven Kingdoms, a sword-and-sorcery novel that could be the first of seven in a series. I have ideas for five more. Yes, that's only six. We'll see what my odd little brain coughs up for the last one.

Plague Scars, my post-apocalyptic domestic novel, will be out later this year.

Meantime, I'm finishing my first steampunk novel with a strong romantic plot. Annie's Doomsday Engine can best be described as Mission Impossible meets The Wild Wild West (TV show, not awful movie) on the Island of Dr. Moreau. After that I have a list of six novels to finish, that are in assorted stages of near-completion. Then we shall see about continuing the ones that I'd like to be series, trilogies, or even simply two volumes. I want to write a sequel to Phoenix Hatching, and I've got a rough draft done, called Phoenix Flying. I have two more steampunk ideas that are set in the same milieu as Annie's. I've already mentioned Seven Kingdoms wants to be a series, and Grove Secrets has two sequels involving the same family that are banging around in my head. Then, at last, there are two 'learning experience' novels I wrote a long time ago that had some potential. I'm going to scrap everything but the basic idea and characters, and try at least the first one again.

And if I live long enough, I have a huge list of ideas... I wish I'd gotten my writing feet under me a long time ago, but I've always been a late bloomer.

The Earth will go on... without us.

I've gotten flak for my stances on the environment. One thing I hear a lot is, Why worry? The earth has been through many disasters. If we cause another one, it'll recover. Animals go extinct, others evolve. So why bother?

I bother because I'd like humans to be able to continue on this planet. Yes, the earth will go on, evolution will continue. But if we poison, heat up, drain all the potable water, and screw up the ecology enough that the weather turns apocalyptic, humans won't be part of that earth or that evolution. What environmentalists are trying to save the earth for, is people.

Trouble is, there's no profit in saving the environment. Tiger skins and other parts, elephant tusks, and the land the tigers and elephants need to live on is all too valuable. So we use  it up. The oil companies can't figure out how to make obscene amounts of money on renewable energy sources, so they don't fund the research and they spread lies about it. Meanwhile they're fracking the daylights out of every possible source. Here in New Mexico, impoverished farmers are selling their fresh water to frackers. Like we've got such an excess of potable water in this desert state. And when it's all poisoned - make no mistake, fracking poisons water - there'll be no water left to drink.

At least, not cheap water. Want to pay for water at the same prices as gasoline? Keep on, folks. You will.

Global warming is another hot topic. Of course, the uber-rich who are currently running America don't want to 'believe' in it despite all the evidence. It would make them have to make changes in their companies that would cut into their profits, and of course if you only make 9 million a year instead of 10, you've got quite a hardship. Mercy, how does anyone live on that? Poor souls. And who cares about dead polar bears anyway? Can't make a profit on them. So on we go, melting the ice caps, until sooner or later low-lying coastline cities will be inundated. Oh, you bet they can make a profit on that. Just watch.

We keep poisoning the air and water, cutting holes in the ecosystem, blissfully assured that humans can't possibly go extinct. We're immortal and perfect, we're invincible.

Hah.

And away we go

Having discovered CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle both have free, if rather generic, cover generators, I've got ahead and self-published some old pieces. Home Again, a romantic suspense, is now available as a print copy. Haven't done the ebook yet. Two sci fi novellas are now out at e-books. They are Like a Single Cell and Reb Dexter's Last Concert. If I can get enough short pieces together to fill up a book, I'll put them out in print. I can't decide what to do with three children's books - they're text for picture books, but I can't draw very well. Put them in with the 2 short stories?

My life's work doesn't look like much so far, but there's more to come. I've thrown out a lot of old crap that wasn't salvageable, and lost some pieces to assorted accidents, corrupted floppies, and dead computers. After NaNoWriMo, I've learned how to rough-draft a lot faster than I used to. Hopefully I'll be able to finish all the partial books, fragments, and ideas I've got. Whoops, sorry Sandy, there's a 'got.' You can take the girl out of Kansas, but the speech patterns are going to stick no matter what.

I want to earn enough to afford Digital Donna's magnificent work for the rest of the Phoenix trilogy. And I'd like to have it also for the Seven Kingdoms  and Grove Witches series. The first book in each series is ready to publish, and I've rough-drafted the second of the Phoenix books. I'll be rough-drafting the third one this November (NaNoWriMo).

And soon: Plague Scars.

The Children's Eyes

 

The weak ones and the wounded ones,

The ones frustration tears,

Pick helpless victims for their hate –

They make their children bear.

The children learn that love is pain,

And blows just show you care.

Even though the bruises heal,

The pain is always there;

And generations down the line,

The painful pattern grows.

Some survivors make it through –

The scars all may not show.

The twisted parents shift the blame

And tell their alibis,

The children hold their twisted love

Deep in their blackened eyes. 

In their eyes you see the future,

In their eyes you see the past.

In their eyes you’ll see how well we’ve done –

We’ve made the evil last

In the children’s eyes. 

For boundaries only in our minds,

For dogmas soon forgot,

For cold ambitious power plays:

The wars just never stop.

And from the rubble watch them come –

Survive’s too strong a word.

And though some of them live to grow,

They can’t outgrow the hurt.

The legacy of hate we’ve left –

We’ve taught them all we know,

And generations down the line,

The violence just grows.

From Ireland to Vietnam

The whole world’s heard their cries:

The price of war’s not cities, friend,

It’s in the children’s eyes.

In their eyes you see the future,

In their eyes you see the past.

In their eyes you’ll see how well we’ve done –

We’ve made the evil last

In the children’s eyes.

 

 

What I really want for Christmas

What do I want for Christmas? My mom asks this every year. This year, I honestly don’t know. Short of giving her a list of books and DVDs, there’s not much that I want that can actually be put in a box and wrapped up.

I want my husband’s health back. The medicines he has to take for his constant pain make him a different person. I miss the old him.

I want a place to live in a better part of town, and preferably over 1000 square feet.

I want our car paid off. It costs us nearly as much a month as our rent.

I want to be able to sell or self-publish the other four finished novels I’ve written.

I want the 20 pounds I’ve gained to GO AWAY.

I want my hairline back where it was.

I want to be able to pay all our bills each month without juggling.

I want energy.

I want my cats to stop pooping outside the box, and if they’d bury the poop they actually do in the box, it’d be lovely.

That’s my real Christmas list.

Wanderlust

The urge to move is itching me,
The highway sings a song.
I’ve got the wanderlust so bad
My whole life just looks wrong,
But deep inside my soul I know
To go won’t change a thing.
My enemy’s inside my brain
And that’s the real sting.
‘Cause you can run around the world,
No matter what you find,
And even at the speed of light
You’re trapped inside your mind.
But still I’m full of wanderlust –
The far hills look so green,
And maybe in another place
The people won’t be mean.
The highway sings its siren song,
The only words I trust:
I won’t return if I give in
Just once to wanderlust.

Sometimes I’ll just be glancing round
To see what’s there to see;
My eyes will fix upon a man
And unexpectedly
The sight gives me a hot, sharp pang
That hits and moves straight down.
It seems to make no difference if
His hair's red, gold, or brown.
Can’t really say what catches me,
The way he moves perhaps,
Or humor in a pair of eyes
That sparkle when he laughs.
Intelligence gets to me, too –
The dumb ones make me yawn.
Yes, strength is sexy, goodness knows,
But humor beats out brawn.
These crushes never last too long,
They singe me then they fade.
My lust has wandered near and far
But never has it stayed.