Random cool moment

We arrived in Texas in February of 2018.  Besides everything else that was part of the move, like starting a new job, throwing bunches of stuff in storage, new Driver’s Licenses, etc, we started work on renovating a historic home in our new hometown (population 652).  How historic, we didn’t know.  The tax records show it as being built in the late 1930s.

Our down-to-the-studs work on the home became more like archeology.  It turns out the back 2/3s of the house was built in 1937, while the front 1/3 is a tacked on old Baptist church from between 1860 – 1880, based on the construction materials and techniques used (rusty iron nails shaped more like splinters, barn-wood, and even …

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Update on my spirit

My mood (“spirits” as they are sometimes called) is a bit subdued.  If you saw the previous post about Mother’s Day, pretty sure it seems reasonable.  But add to that the lingering bedamned cold and the fact I have a gall-bladder removal scheduled (after about ten years of mysterious double-me-over pain striking at random intervals), then yeah, I could be excused for feeling less gleeful than usual.

On the other hand, my lovely wife has been planning a new office for me at the historic home we are renovating, and it was finally revealed in all of its Coast Guard-themed glory this week.

 

Above, I’m standing beside a “Quilt of Valor” made by a dear friend in California.  In …

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Thanks for Subscribing!

Thank you for reading my books and for your interest in my work.  While you’re waiting for my next novel, you might enjoy the short stories found here.

Now, here’s my promise:  I’m not going to be spamming you daily with “Hey, quick, there’s a deal on my Robert Fitzgerald Action Figures, get them now!” kind of crap.  I hate that nonsense, and I don’t want to waste anybody’s time with garbage like that.

What I will do is send out a brief update email once a month or so, if there’s anything cool to share.  Maybe tell you about some of the upcoming projects or news (movie deals?  Well, a boy can dream).  Might offer to give you

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The Paper of Record Just Recorded They’re All Right with Racism. Really.

Or: “The black people were surprisingly good last night…”

 

One of my personal failings (well, the only one I feel like admitting) is I have a strong fairness impulse. It was the whole Martin Luther King thing, judge people by the content of the character not the color of the skin. My father, who had grown up in the deep South surrounded by virulent racism, introduced me to the concept, mostly by the way he lived his life, treating everyone he met with the same courtesy, fairness, and respect.  It was what made me a nascent liberal as a young man.

That belief in fairness was the same thing that drove me away from Liberals. Growing up, my experiences with

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I’ve always liked donkeys

Don’t know why.  Maybe it’s something about their faces.  They seem to take life very seriously.

Turns out in Texas (where we moved and are enjoying a great deal), there are places with more donkeys than local forage for them.  Rather than euthanize them, the state allows people to adopt these donkeys.  Basically, you are fostering the donkey on your land.

Since I hate the idea of animals suffering (see my first By the Hands of Men novel for more on that)…

 

…once we get some good green East Texas acreage, I plan on adopting.  Since they’re herd animals, it would be cruel to only have one, and so there are two donkeys in my future.

I’m going to …

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I swear to the Lord Almighty…

This is the most frightening dog I’ve ever seen. I was taking pictures of the East Texas flowers, and this dog was sitting in the shade of a house. He never came into the sun.

I was convinced he was going to suck the soul from my body.…

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The Elimination Process

By the way, there’s mass-shooting you haven’t heard about.  A Sudanese immigrant went into a church and shot seven people, before one of the ushers (who had a permit for his own weapon) stopped the attempted massacre.
Strangely, it’s not leading the 24-hour news cycle, nor is it fodder for the spiritual leaders of our time (Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel were too busy helping Chuck Schummer propagandize about the need for pre-socialized medicine to address it).  
But in case you were asking yourself, “Hey, I heard that Gunz are Teh Badz.  Why aren’t my leading moral lights telling me about this outrage?”, allow me to go through the Elimination Process that the good folks at Pravda Central
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I used to wonder

“When will I know I’m a real writer?”

Being younger (and certifiably dumber), I imagined the answer would be something like:

  • Mansion and starlets rubbing coconut oil on my aching fingers.
  • Riots at my book-signings
  • Tabloid reports about my coke-fueled binges on croissants and women of questionable virtue during lost weekends in Vegas.

 

When younger (see above), I was expecting certain kinds of evidence to confirm that I was a “writer.”  The fruits of success would be the proof.

And when those fruits (as I conceived of them) didn’t appear, I was downcast.  I failed to achieve the rewards, and thus I was a failure.

Then, as so often happens when we’re not looking, I got older.

Fortunately, I …

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