If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee atKo-Fi.
No, it’s not a short story in an anthology. Time’s Abyss is a completely self-contained novella, book 10 of 12 in the Underground series published by Black Hare Press.
It’s available for pre-order from Amazon for delivery to your kindle device on October 15, 2021.
That’s right. There’ll be six month wait until you can dig into this nearly 30,000 word saga.
What would have happened if Dorothy hadn’t made it back to Kansas from Oz? What would have happened if she didn’t want to go? What would have it been like if the “good witch” Glinda had craved the ruby slippers for her own, and after a few minutes, hours, or days, what would the transformed Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion really have been like with their new attributes?
To find out, buy a copy of this anthology and read “No Place Like Home.” I promise, you’ll never think of Dorothy the same way again.
Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch from the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz”
This one has been in the works for months, and the story involved has been edited again and again. I think you’ll like the final result. It will become available Saturday. I still can’t talk about it and have no promotional materials to offer, but I can share an excerpt to whet your appetite.
Toto barked at the witch like a maniac, but mercifully, didn’t try to escape Dorothy’s grasp. The broomstick competed with Dorothy’s legs as to which could shake faster and harder. If the monkeys didn’t arrive soon, Glinda would grab Dorothy and send her back home. Dorothy could try to ride the broomstick back to Wicked’s castle, where she knew the monkeys were sure to take her if they’d ever show up. But she’d never ridden a broomstick before. What if she fell – or worse, dropped Toto?
Months back, the free version of WordPress took away what they now call the Classic Editor used to write and edit blog posts and replaced it with something that for me is almost unusable; Gutenberg. I tried to work with it at first, but it was (and is) terrifically awkward.
Then I discovered that if you create a post, publish it, and then edit it again, there was an option for the Classic Editor. I figured I was saved.
Then today or yesterday, I saw that my blog’s menu had changed again. Instead of “Dashboard,” there’s now something called “My Home” which doesn’t behave quite the same way. Actually, it’s a dumbed down version of the old Dashboard. What’s worse is when you put a blog into edit mode, the Classic Editor is just plain gone.
I’ve tried various settings but there’s no way I can trick it back.
The first time the Classic Editor disappeared, I Googled hoping to find a way to have it return, but the only option I could find was installing a plugin. You can’t install plugins with the free version of WordPress.
I Googled again and still no go. I can’t even find help pages for the current changes and what I can find about the plugin doesn’t mention the account type you need to follow the instructions.
So I decided what the heck. This is obviously WordPress trying to get people to pay for their product (I can’t blame them, but it still feels like they’re playing dirty). I looked at my upgrade options (but not very closely as you’ll see) and selected Premium. It’s only eight bucks a month or just under $100.00 a year, so it wasn’t going to break the bank.
After my purchase, nothing seemed different.
I looked closer and you can only install plugins with the Business version or higher, which is something like $300.00 a year. No, I’m not paying that much just because I want one plugin.
Just wanted to say a quick congratulations to G. Scott Huggins for being named the 2021 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Contest Winner. A few years back, I somehow started following him on Facebook and more recently twitter, so I’ve known about this for a few days.
The really cool thing according to Baen is:
In an interesting turn, Huggins was the winner of the 2020 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, another short story contest sponsored by Baen Books. Both contests are judged anonymously.
Promotional image for Leo Flynn’s novelette, “Mara’s Awakening”.
Disclosure, I was asked by the author via email to review his short novelette Mara’s Awakening. Interestingly enough, when I tried to post a review on Amazon, I received a notice that it wasn’t eligible to be reviewed. I have no idea why.
I had a tough time understanding this very short book. I imagine the author was trying to inject some mystery into who Mara is and why she’s been in prison for six years when she used to be some sort of popular fighter, but she was too “mysterious.”
Caroline lamented the abysmal lack of supportive parental characters, Moms in particular, in modern works of science fiction. She narrowed down the reason for this from her perspective here:
It was kind of hard to get into. Weber has a tendency to lapse into long pages of dense exposition, which tends to put the reader into one person’s head (more often than not, Honor’s) than into the action.
However, if you can power through that, you finally get to a space opera laced with political intrigue, the dynamics of provincial planetary plotting, and then the climax of classic space battle.
Weber seems to have a background in military strategy, which shows in how he depicts martial activities, both in space and on the planet. However, there were times when life aboard Honor’s ship “Fearless” felt a little like “Star Trek.”
The one thing that would have made his book better would be to cut back on each character seemingly talking too much about themselves. Also, antagonists like Lord Pavel Young and the ultra-wealthy Klaus Hauptman weren’t as prominent or as formidable as I expected them to be based on how they were initially presented.
First of all, let me say that I haven’t seen any of the WandaVision mini-series and don’t anticipate watching this new show either. It’s not that I think they’ll be bad or I won’t enjoy them. I just don’t subscribe to streaming services. Well, besides that, I don’t have the time to dedicate myself to television shows anymore.
I used to watch all of the WB produced superhero shows, popularly known as the Arrowverse, but they were consuming so much of my free time, I didn’t have any left for things like writing and a life.
