A Profound Look Back at the Week: June 15-19

Summer is upon us, finally, although I’m not sure why I say “finally” since I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the heat. But I was kind of looking forward to the sun because even my love for rain has its limits. Well, it’s here, the sun. And the heat.

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A Profound Look Back at the Week: May 18-22

Summer is on the way, beaches are being opened and closed again because apparently people are flocking there with no regard for social distancing, and the school year in my part of the world is finally drawing to a close. We’re settling into the new normal. Or are we?

DF Part 9: The Last Guardian

I came to with a spinning head, a racing heart, and a stomach doing cartwheels. Someone was calling my name and I was beginning to hate the sound of it.

The Story Repository

It started as a dream journal. I called it that but the goal I started it with was to collect story ideas – kernels – I could use when I was in the mood for a short story. Apparently, once you finish a novel every story idea that comes to mind is a novel idea, or at least this is the case for me. Now, dreams on the other hand, dreams are short story material, I’ve no idea why. What I know is that most of the short stories I’ve written started their lives as something in a dream. It made sense to collect these story kernels.

DF Part 1: A Bridge in the Sea

This is the first story in what was going to be The Dansk Finanzbar Chronicles, a series of loosely related short stories in the wonderful tradition of Raymond Chandler although my protagonist was not a private eye but a dreamer, a person who can change reality by dreaming about it, often involuntarily. Long story short, it didn’t work as I expected, so I turned it into a novel. This first story, along with a few others, I think, is good enough on its own, so I’m sharing it.

Author’s note: The ‘z’ in Finanzbar is German and not Danish but hey, that’s how I dreamed it and besides it’s a federation, so there.

The Four Rules of Bad Parenting

Okay, how bad is bad parenting? What is bad parenting? Opinions, to put it mildly, differ, but let’s go with the prevailing narrative (a phrase I deplore but have resigned to using for clarity’s sake). Bad parenting is the worst thing possible because, well, children are our future, our claim to immortality, complete sentence as you like. And as for what is bad parenting… Well, you’ ll find out soon enough.