Writers: It’s That Time Again!

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Amazingly enough, another year has shot by at the speed of light, and it’s time for Glen of Scenic Writer’s Shack to throw his annual short story contest! Or, with 500 maximum words, exciting flash fiction galore.

Hey, I know I’m not the best example when it comes to urging you to write since I’ve fallen by the wayside in recent years, but even if I’m not writing, it’s the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of when I go to bed.

So for those of you who feel the same, except that between waking up and going to bed, you actually do write, join the contest! Throw fate to the wind! Make me look bad! 🙂

For all the info you could possibly need (and a deadline of February 6, so don’t wait too long) here’s where to go: Competition Launch | Scenic Writer’s Shack

A great way to start 2026. Do as I say, not as I do!

Hard Luck Harry in Deadtime – audio book promotional code giveaway!

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Hi, gang!

I wish this was a new blog about a movie or something else, but it’s not. If I can untwist my brain anytime in the near future, it will be, soon! (Any ideas, anyone? I’m kinda blank, lol)

But for now, we have received five promotional codes to give away to anyone who’d like to listen to Hard Luck Harry in Deadtime on audiobook! Available in the US and also in the UK.

Please email me if you’re down and I’ll send back the code and the link! Email is up above in “contact.”

Thank you all for your interest and support. You guys have been amazing! 🙂

Embrace the Pain

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In response to escalating events, we put on Dr. Strangelove tonight and belly laughed through the entire movie. And it would have been even funnier if it hadn’t paralleled recent situations and personalities with mind-blowing kinship–incompetence, fanaticism, spinelessness, and utter chaos included.

Still, got a little high on those laughter endorphins while embracing the pain. Go find the Doctor and get a little high too.

First Time in 30 Years!

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It’s probably not something to brag about, but it only took hubby and me 30 years to collaborate on a book together. Should I be proud? Embarrassed? Maybe somewhere in between….I am happy, tho.

The publisher sent out preorder links, so I’m posting it here. If you use the promo code: PREORDER2025, it’s 15% off! But as these aren’t the best days to be spending $$ on stuff we don’t need to survive, waiting for the electronic version might be a better option.

If, of course, you’re into dystopian science fiction about a girl with a missing father and the schizophrenic android who tries to help her–while also helping himself, of course. You may not be into it at all. But hope lives.

That’s all for now. More later! xoxoxo

https://www.blackrosewriting.com/scifi/p/hardluckharryindeadtime

We Are Mrs. Bacchus

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Years ago when my husband and I moved back to LA into an apartment in the Valley, an elderly neighbor who was living alone, Mrs. Bacchus, developed a mysterious affection toward my husband (she hated everyone else, including me).

Hubby was returning home one day and as he walked past Mrs. Bacchus’ door, a raspy, dry voice called out, “Rico! Rico!” (My husband doesn’t have or want an online presence, so Rico is my alias for him, not his real name). He heard desperation and urgent need. He doubled back and looked through Mrs. Bacchus’s door, which was ajar, finding her on the floor, unable to rise.

Surrounded by the sugary snacks and bottled water she had barely been able to pull from her grocery bags, she had been subsisting on this for the past two or three days. She obviously hadn’t been able to make it to the bathroom. She was dehydrated and very weak.

I remember thinking, are we really going to get that weak one day? Where the commercial, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up,” is going to become our reality? A return to the complete and utter helplessness of infancy? No. I refuse to believe it. We might get lucky. It isn’t written in stone.

I didn’t realize back then how wrong I was, but for different reasons other than the inevitabilities of aging.

This was way before the war in Gaza. The war in Ukraine. COVID, Dead chickens, quadrupled rents, people living in tents on the sidewalks in upscale neighborhoods. Before something orange and rancid, aided by an insane clown posse of Gilead-like enablers, started firing everyone, deporting everyone, threatening our allies, and bombing the world economy.

Maybe some are doing okay. But one way or another, so many of us, so many that I know, even before the transgressions of time, even in the bloom of youth, are lying on the living room floor, barely enough water, Twinkie wrappers everywhere. Remember “I am Groot”? I am Mrs. Bacchus. We are Mrs. Bacchus. One eye fixed on the crack in the door. Hoping against hope that Rico walks by.

But, really, anyone will do.

Hang in there, everyone.

WRITERS! Come one, come all

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It’s that time of year again! Fellow blogger Glen of Scenic Writer’s Shack is hosting his second annual writing contest, and you’re invited. Deadline–March 10th. Get all the deets at his site below, along with cash prize amounts! We already love to write. Getting paid to write–cherry on top. And it’s free!

Writing Competition Launch

The winning stories last year, posted on Glen’s site, were a blast to read, proving that much untold talent and creativity lurks in our midst. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your grandparents! Or just check out Scenic Writer’s Shack’s reviews, tales, and much more, including jokes like this on the side to brighten your day:

See you there!

And The Burning Center

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(Reposted from a post years ago. Not because of writer’s block. Just a certain general lack of élan. Which is sort of worse.) 🙂

Someone once said there was no such thing as writer’s block. You’re just out of ideas. Um….well, I’d call that a block, wouldn’t you? If you’re out of ideas, you’re blocked from writing. From words. From ideas. From sentences. From endings. Beginnings.

If you happened to follow Sandman while it was on, one of our favorite episodes was where a writer acquires a muse from a fellow has-been writer who’d been keeping her prisoner.  The muse becomes the prisoner of the new writer…until her ex-husband, Sandman finds out, and, well…that’s the end of that. But first, Sandman punishes the writer by cursing him with a promise: “If it’s ideas you want…it’s ideas you’ll have. In abundance.”

Not good abundance. Bad abundance. But sometimes I think, in those circumstances, inciting a demigod’s wrath might just be worth it.

Below is an ode to writer’s block. And also how, sometimes out of left field, inspiration, motivation, ideas, can come from the last place you’d expect.

Weirdly, the form was inspired by the way the 2 Broke Girls sit-com used to phrase every single one of their titles, with “And the” before the rest. IE: “And the Wrecking Ball,” “And the Maybe Baby.”

I thought it was refreshing to have strange titles like that, as if commenting on its own ongoing narrative. I see writer’s block that way: as an ongoing internal narrative, an endless circling around and around, mindlessly chasing one’s own tail, until the internal chatter halts or the tail is finally caught.

And the writer’s block.

And the writer’s block.

And the writer’s block.

And the broken sleep.

And the empty page.

And the leering page.

And the halting start.

And the partial sentence.

And the wrong direction.

And the procrastination.

And the scanning email.

And the empty email.

And the new start.

And the new sentence.

And the faithful angst.

And the delete button.

And the delete button.

And the empty page.

And the unctuous page.

And the dragging time.

And the stingy syllables.

And the wretched syntax.

And the stutter and stop.

And the procrastination.

And the procrastination.

And the writer’s groups.

And the logging in.

And the anonymous banter.

And the hour lost.

And the logging out.

And the looming television.

And the search for something.

And the clutching distraction.

And the hope for insight.

And the empty nothing.

And the death of hope.

And the discarded television.

And the dragging time.

And the idle hours.

And the empty page.

And the empty page.

And the empty page.

And the wandering eye.

And the favorite book.

And the quiet perusing.

And the beautiful sentence.

And the wall between you

And the beautiful sentence.

And the skulking hours.

And the start and stutter.

And the start and stutter.

And the waning mettle.

And the ebony chasm

And the words inside it

At the ghostly bottom.

And the spouse’s entrance.

And the hot annoyance

And hiding annoyance

And mimicking patience.

And the things he brings.

And the bowl of chips.

And the cranberry juice.

And something he says.

And the spouse’s withdrawal.

And something he said.

And the thought unfurling.

And the pop and spark.

And the thing he said.

And the flaring spark.

And the burning spark.

And the thing he said.

And the thing he said.

And the fissured chasm

And the words inside it

And the tender syllables

And the waxing rhythm

Of the blazing passage

Through the burning center

When You Close Your Eyes, is the World Still There?

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After my father had been alone in his house in Calabasas for about a decade, he decided to sell.

It was a strange experience trying to help him, because he didn’t seem to have any attachment to most of the things he owned. In the midst of looking up places to sell a beautiful, long serving table and the family’s small upright piano, I’d call him with my progress and he’d say, “Oh, I gave the piano away, darling.” “Oh, I gave the serving table to so and so.”

I helped him clear out the junk and organize what he was taking, but in my absence he had workers come and remove everything in the garage, including a box of dolls I admittedly should have taken out of there years ago, and two containers of expensive crystal, and take it all to the dump.

“Oh, the crystal was in there?” he said, and sort of laughed.

My father doesn’t have one shred of dementia. He just didn’t care.

On one hand, it’s admirable. I love it. Because it is just stuff, and you can’t take it with you. He would have flourished in Buddhism. Desire and attachments cause suffering. Well, without being Buddhist, Dad had mastered at least one of those.

But then he went one step too far when he had the cabinet in his bedroom hauled off to the dump without looking inside it first. Who does that? Doesn’t even look inside?

Maybe you can guess what was in it.

The photo albums. Our past. Our childhoods. Vacations, holidays, normal days. Our life. I think I almost had an aneurysm. I felt so wounded that I went into a funk and couldn’t pull out of it for weeks.

A long time ago I used to think: when I close my eyes, nothing exists except for what’s in my memory. The world might be a figment of my imagination for all I know. And I’m making it up as I go. I could still hear it, though. I could still smell it. Whatever it was, it was still there. Something out there persisted, despite visual confirmation.

The photos were gone, but our life was still existed. With or without them, something had happened. I wouldn’t have reminders for all the memories, but because I’d pilfered enough of the photos out of the albums over the years, at least I’d have some. Some of which I’ve posted here. Unlike Dad, I’m attached. I guess I have a few more lives to live yet.

I couldn’t stay mad at Dad for too long, either, in the end. Sometimes love is the only thing that saves us.