This morning early, ~1AM, it was breezy, but balmy. Later, by 7AM, the wind had turned vengeful and bitter.
Winter is coming.
I’m very glad Forrest will be home this winter, not driving dangerous roads. Meanwhile, though, the chill put a damper on my spirits — completely. It’s depressing to think that, in a matter of days to a spare couple of weeks, we could be facing below zero temperatures …which would be very early, even for North Idaho.
Back in January, 2016, I quit publishing. I had book #3 of the Country James series ready to throw to my editor and was pounding out the final manuscript of E. J.’s Come-Back Road, the second book of a planned three book series covering the life of one Dr. Warren Jeffries, DVM that started with Old Hickory Lane. I quit because I got a good solid look at the piracy numbers of just one of my titles. Then, I got the rest of the numbers, too. 
Throughout 2016 and 2017, I published nothing. And I was pretty darned sure that I would never publish another novel, not until piracy could be defeated (Ha! Dream on. Did a year of research on that and found no good solution.) Then I met author Laura Belgrave, mystery/crime author of the Claudia Hershey Mystery series. Like a drip of water that slowly wears away stone, Laura got my rock hard petulance worn down bit by bit. It took her until January of this year. Then, once again, I began to research.
I’ve got a very interesting brain. It works at its own pace, and, usually, that pace is quite fast. Not this time. I kept shoving data in, but got back …silence. I shoveled in more data. Then more again. Still silence. Eight solid months inputting more and more data; eight solid months of dead silence. …Until last week, when, like gears finally starting to move once the penetrating oil does its job or like one of those strange flowers that takes months to form, then bursts open into full bloom all at once, the whole evaluation and conclusion precipitated from subliminal simmering into fully served answer.
So I tried it.
And it worked.
Now, I’m scurrying about, pulling out projects I built, then mothballed as unworkable, and all the pieces are hanging together quite nicely.
I’ll keep you posted on progress as I work through all the various branches of the project’s build. See you on the other side.
Yeah. I know. It’s about time, huh! So, I’m working on EJRuek.com and CountryJames.com, then it will be DLKeur.com right after. Then, I’ll see about revitalizing Aeros’ site. Meanwhile, I did release another E. J. Ruek book. I just never got around to posting it up here on this, my main website. It’s titled Slightly Disturbing Stories and those folks who’ve read it seem to really, really like it.
Way back before I set a moratorium on publishing my novels because of piracy, I set out to write at least two books a year. And did it. In fact, all three of my Montana Love Story novels were written in a month and under, with the second and still unpublished third book drafted in seventeen days and sixteen days, respectively. It was something which I hadn’t thought myself capable, that is to write a good book — one of my books — in shorter than a year. I proved to myself that I could …only to quit publishing in a fit of temper about all my books having been pirated, even those exclusive to Amazon.
Now, a full two years plus since my last novel’s release, an author friend’s needs prompted me to put my process down in an orderly, organized guide. Here it is:
There’s a LOT of hyperbole, a lot of emotion, a lot of tears and cries of anguish. But the sides involved aren’t communicating with each other effectively. In fact, they aren’t even talking, just pointing fingers and screaming back and forth, filled to the brim with emotion about keeping kids safe by banning certain kinds of weaponry. Why am I hearing, I wonder, about guns? Shouldn’t I be hearing about BANNING VIOLENCE?
You know, there are disturbed children. There are born sociopaths. And there are damaged children, some of whom will never become undamaged. And, truth be told, there are just some people who are born mean-spirited. The fact is you cannot legislate safety and you cannot protect people from predation until and unless you somehow identify those who potentially could become predators …which, because we are human, the super-predator, is everyone. The problem with trying to outlaw tools of predation is that other tools then become employed, tools with equally unpleasant consequences.
Everyone wants to live in safety, but humans are, by nature, a very cruel and vicious creature. Heck, most of you don’t think twice about killing a spider that has walked across your path, even when you’re in that spider’s garden.
Let’s look at the rabidity of the factions involved in even this debate. It’s practically torches and pitch forks, no dialogue, no seeking common ground, no attempt to understand each other’s concerns.
I was the kid who was bullied when stuck in a public school. I was a kid who was shunned as ‘different’, not because I was a sociopath and mean, but because I was an outsider. No one befriended me. Nobody protected me from being beaten with chains by my school mates, this in high school.
I can fully understand why a bullied child would turn a gun or a crossbow or a bomb on his classmates. I can understand them lacing candy with poison to retaliate. I never did it, never even thought about doing it, but I can certainly understand the motivation to ‘get even’. I have a broken spine in my back today from those chain beatings. But I was raised by a father who came from the Dutch Reform heritage — always taught to turn the other cheek and to forgive.
You all want safety for your kids and for yourselves. Great. Then you and all of us have to change the nature of human beings worldwide, a huge undertaking with the understanding that not everyone wants peace and tranquility and safety. Some thrive on cruelty and mayhem, on butchery and terrorizing. But, to begin, we have to set an example and that begins with each one of us not engaging in name-calling, castigation, spurning, ostracizing, and condemning those who don’t share our perspectives.
That also means that, reality check, you and your kids have to be always prepared and always vigilant, capable of defending yourselves, even if it means the death of another at your hand.
Just my thoughts.
