#Agent Thoth's #Personal Log: Day 926

Hey Everyone! :-)

Agent Thoth discusses more of the trials and tribulations associated with living with hominids. Incidentally, if you've missed Agent Thoth's earlier entries, you can find them here: Thoth's Journal

Department for the Preservation and Confirmation of Intelligent Life (DPCIL)

Agent Thoth's Personal Log

Day Nine-Hundred-Twenty-Six:

Today, the juvenile felid altered his strategy in his quest to make closer acquaintance with the bushy-tailed rodent…or to eat it. Instead of trying, and failing, to teleport himself through glass, he apparently decided to charm the small creature into coming to him. Though, how he thought the animal would manage to get through the portal when he could not escapes me.

Unfortunately for him, the method he settled on to accomplish this feat was to serenade the small mammal at the top volume his vocal cords were capable of achieving. Naturally, the noise drew the attention of my hominid-servant, who did not seem to find the racket charming at all. She resorted to utilizing her liquid H2O dispenser to dissuade the little idiot, which startled him to the point where he retreated to beneath her sleeping platform in terror. Which, at this point, is where he remains.

Well, there's no accounting for taste. ;-) You may have noticed that Agent Thoth has a new look. I hope you like his new picture as much as I do, but I'd love to hear your thoughts, either way. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments. ;-) Happy reading, everyone!

#Interview With R. Read!

Hey Everyone!! :-)

R. Read is here with us, today. R., can you please tell us about yourself and how many books you have written?

R: Twenty-five years of writing copy for other folks’ marketing plans & strategy I finally took a class in Dec 2016 called Write or Die. Opened the floodgates and have been self-publishing so far. She Too. 2017. Describing Water in 2018. And most recent Energy Fix late 2018. All are on free library app Overdrive and available through Kindle and Amazon. 

Me: Sounds like you had a calling! :-) What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?

R: Energy Fix was inspired by a job I had ten years ago. I was the recipient of a piece of hate mail, recognized the corruption at levels that were dangerous and wrote a fiction novel based on the actual words in the letter, warning me to get out!

Me: Wow, sounds like a job best left behind. Glad you found some good in the experience by taking that inspiration to write a novel. What are you working on now?

R: I am writing another “based on real life” story of a third-year student killed randomly in his dorm...my hubby was a polygraph examiner on the case. Its ending or resolution is so crazy (stranger than fiction) so I am using much of what I learned about how they found the killer(s)

Me: Sounds interesting! :-) What authors, or books, have influenced you?

R: Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins got me thinking about fiction based loosely on IRL. Love Diana Gabaldon but newly addicted to thrillers by Linwood Barclay. I too am Canadian. His stuff is SO Good! 

Me: Cool! What are you reading now?

R: I am reading all of Linwood Barclay and just started All the Light We Cannot See...but my favorite of late was On Writing by Stephen King. 

Me: I agree, Stephen King has a lot of great work out there. For those who might consider reading your book, what would you tell them to expect?

R: She Too is dark and choppy, but VERY BENEFICIAL to anyone headed to college/their families. One detective who read it said “it should be required reading,” which I totally agree with. Hazing and assault on campus are at epidemic proportions of late - I wish I had known before my daughters were off. Also, Energy Fix will get people talking about how PGE should be held responsible for their actions IMHO. 

Me: Awesome! Thought-provoking books are always a good thing. :-) What's your favorite part of being an author?

R: Getting messages off my chest. Gifting books to willing readers. Hearing back “their stories” once they have read mine. EVERYONE has a story in them!

Me: True! And sometimes they write them down for the rest of us to enjoy. ;-) Do you have a day job as well?

R: Yes, I still create marketing strategies, logos, book covers now :)

Me: Busy, busy, busy. What are the hardest and easiest parts about being a writer?

R: Its hard knowing who to trust. Got duped by a supposed editor :(

Me: That's true, unfortunately. You might want to try joining a supportive author group, like the Authors-Professionals Co-op Facebook group, so that you can ask around and get recommendations for things like that. What genre do you place your book in?

R: My books so far are fiction based on true crimes. The mini-memoir mainly helped me to know what from my past I wanted to write about. 

Me: Great! Is there anything else you'd like to tell your readers?

R: Please hit me up for free books!! I love hearing feedback 

Me: And so these fine folks can do just that, are there any links you'd like me to post?

R: I have good reads page, https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18090861.R_Read, FB, https://www.facebook.com/rkcmktg/, and Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/author/rread. Or email me at shetoobook@gmail.com

Me: Wonderful! Thank you so much for stopping by, today, R. And thank you, also, to the rest of you who joined us. Don't forget to check back tomorrow for the latest in Mistral Dawn's Musings! :-)

Something Worth Watching?

Hey Everyone!! :-)

I'm back today with another video I wanted to share. Yeah, I'm sharing more Bernie stuff, and you can all bet your asses I'll keep it up. Bernie Sanders is our best hope for getting this country back on track and creating a future for ourselves, so don't expect me to shut up anytime soon. You might think songs like this are corny, but they're a manifestation of the kind of sincere popular support Bernie has, so I hope you'll join those of us who want a People's President and help change politics in this country $27 dollars at a time. Peace! #FeelTheBern #Bernie2020

Meatless "Beef" And Potatoes Soup #Recipe!

Hey Everyone!! :-)

Today, I thought I'd share one of my favorite soup recipes with you. It's low fat -- it's even vegan if you leave out the butter -- but very filling. I hope you find it as delicious and warming as I do. :-)

Ingredients:
4 large potatoes cubed
3 large onions chopped
2 large portabello mushrooms, stems and caps, sliced
1 14oz container of sliced button mushrooms
2 large carrots chopped
1 bell pepper chopped
3 cups of raw kale chopped
4 cloves of garlic chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
4 cups water or vegetable stock
1 cup red wine (Merlot or Burgandy work well)
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Sautee the onions in the olive oil and butter in a stock pot until they are well caramelized. Add the carrots and pepper and continue to cook to until they soften. Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook until the mushrooms soften. Stir in the tomato paste and deglaze the pot with the wine.  Add the water or stock, salt and pepper, and potatoes. Bring the soup to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Allow it to simmer for half an hour and stir. Allow to simmer for another 20 minutes to half an hour and stir.  Check to make sure the potatoes are soft and add the kale. Simmer for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the kale wilts, and serve.

If you'd like, once the vegetables are softened you can transfer them to a crockpot and complete the soup there. Still deglaze the pot or pan with the wine and pour that into the crockpot as well. If you don't like wine, or don't keep alcohol in the house, you can use 1/4 cup red wine vinegar and 3/4 cups water or stock to deglaze the pot or pan.  If you don't like button mushrooms, you can use any kind of mushroom you like. If possible, you should use the portabello mushrooms as they add a "meaty" texture and richness to the soup.

You can thicken the broth by mixing 1/4 cornstarch with cold water to make a slurry and adding it to the soup at the end. You can also add any other vegetables you like in your soup. I've made the soup with sweet potatoes instead of potatoes. You can also replace the potatoes with barley or rice. If you like your soup spicy, you can add a couple of chili peppers or some curry paste to the soup. Basically, this is a good basic soup that can be taken in a lot of directions, so don't be afraid to experiment.

Bon appetit!

So...What Happened?

Hey Everyone!!

Today's post is just a quick update about what's going on with Answers From Alyce and why it's taking so long for me to publish. The short answer? I fucked up. The longer answer is that I had just finished the edits (literally an hour earlier) and was getting ready to send it back to my editor for a final proof-reading when my computer shit the bed and I lost all my edits.

I took my computer to some computer experts to try to recover my data, but it turned out my hard drive was corrupted and nothing was recoverable. I had thought I had been backing up to a cloud account, my computer was set up to log into the account and update on startup, but it apparently stopped doing that in December. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that until after the crash, so I lost everything since mid-December. Which, as I said, translates into all of my editing on Answers From Alyce. Though, fortunately, I did still have the unedited file.

So what does this woeful tale mean? It means I've had to start over from the beginning with editing, which has put me even farther behind than I already was. I don't know what to tell you all about that except I'm sorry. I'll redo the edits as quickly as I can and get it formatted, uploaded, and published ASAP. Hopefully, fingers crossed, that will be before May. I know, I suck, I'm sorry.

At any rate, I hope you all have an awesome weekend. And, if you'll excuse me, I have some editing to do. Peace!

They've Got It All Backwards!

Hey Everyone!! :-)

Today's post is something I almost feel silly for writing because it seems like it should be obvious. But with all the nonsense being spewed on corporate media about Democrats needing to be conservative in conservative parts of the country, I thought I should go ahead and say this.

The parts of this country that are conservative are, for the most part, only socially conservative. Most of the people who live in those parts of the country are rather poor, so they are not, generally speaking, economically conservative. What does that mean? It means they want to keep women as voiceless chattel with no say over what happens to their own bodies. And they want to pretend that people in the LGBTQ+ community are either mentally ill or evil, even though that's patently absurd and everyone, including the people in conservative parts of the country, know it. And they are afraid that people of color might infect them with cooties if they're given equal rights.

Does all of that make those people assholes? Yep, it sure does. But they're assholes who vote. And, as I said, they're also generally poor assholes. So, they also would like to tax the rich at higher rates so that their kids can go to schools that don't have leaky roofs and do have up-to-date textbooks. And they would like healthcare that won't bankrupt them that will provide the care they and their families need. And they would like the air they and their kids breathe and the water they drink not to be polluted with poisons from unregulated industry. And they would like to earn a wage they can support their families on. Because while they may be assholes, they aren't, for the most part, masochistic assholes.

So, what does all this mean? It means if you give them two parties that both want to let Wall Street fuck over the rest of the country and allow corporations to be unregulated and allow insurance companies to bleed people dry and then kill them anyway, but one of those parties will deny basic human rights to women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people of color, then they're going to go with the party that hates who they hate. Obviously.

But if you give them one party that doesn't hate who they hate, and won't enforce bigotted policies, but will ensure they have good schools by taxing the wealthy at a fair rate, and will ensure they have affordable healthcare by instituting a Medicare for All system, and will make sure the land they own and live on remains safe for human habitation through strict regulation of industry, and will make employers pay a living wage, well, then they might just vote for that party in spite of their disagreement on social issues. Because, for a lot of people, loyalty to their wallets comes first.

Does that mean that everyone will vote in their own financial best interests when it means they don't get to legislate their bigotry? Nope. Some of them will still bite off their noses to spite their faces. But we don't need all of them, we just need enough of them to win elections. And, yes, I realize even conservative, corporate Democrats aren't usually as bad on economic issues as Republicans. But they're still bad. And if they were actually good on economic issues, instead of being less bad, then they'd have a better chance of using enlightened self-interest to win over people who disagree with them on social issues.

And, yes, obviously not everyone who lives in a conservative part of the country thinks this way. Hell, not everyone who lives in a conservative part of the country is even conservative. I'm talking about broad generalities, here. But enough of them think this way to have kept this country in the dark ages for the last forty years. I'm thinking it's time for a new strategy.

Peace!

#APC #Spotlight: Wicked Heart By Niki Livingston!

Hey Everyone!! :-)

I've got Niki Livingston in my APC spotlight, today! Niki is an active and supportive member of the  Authors-Professional Co-op Facebook group and her new release, romantic suspense, magical mystery, paranormal romance novel, Wicked Hearts, looks great! Here's the description:

Sometimes love arrives too late.

She was just a young girl. Innocent. Naïve.

But now Sami’s been forced into a torturous solitude, with only her thoughts to amuse and consume her. Will love, once again, be allowed into her darkened heart or will the heartbreak of her past keep her its prisoner until her last breath?

 If you think this sounds like something you might enjoy, go ahead and grab your copy here:

Thank you all so much for stopping by! Happy reading! :-)