Last month’s musings dealt with some changes I made in my life to make my life easier.
Thanks to the many, many, many people who appreciated my vulnerability and got back to me with offers to help, to listen, to sympathize, to simply make themselves available. The concern, honestly, took me by surprise. Susan and I are usually the ones people turn to, and perhaps it’s a character flaw on our part that we don’t often ask for help. Both of us spent much of our lives in environments where help came rarely, and when it did, it came with a pricetag, which, to us, is not help, but a service.
In our cases, we both made conscious decisions long ago that we’d help when we could, often in secret, and not seek remuneration. The individual being helped is already under strain and stress, don’t add to it by insisting, asking, expecting, or wanting a return. You’ll find this in our Principles 22 – If someone is drowning don’t ask them “How wet is the water?” – and 38 – When someone is hanging onto a cliff by their fingernails, don’t ask them if they want to play catch.
Note this is one of the areas where I don’t consider ROI (Return On Investment).
Paraphrasing several people, “You do so much already. Give yourself a break.”
Sorry, no, giving is living.
My changes continue. I continue to search for a good table where I can both feed others and be fed, as in 79 – Be so confident in knowing what you bring to the table you’re willing to eat alone until you find the right table.
A corollary is It doesn’t matter what you bring to the table if you eat alone. But remember, it’s better to eat alone that sit with those who do offer nothing and eat your food. and 24 – Don’t feed someone when you’re hungry.
You’ll be jealous of what they eat and there’s no guarantee there’ll be any left for you when they’re done.
Nobody’s ever accused me of being confident. I consider myself one of the least confident people I know.
But I am comfortable with what I know, and appreciate both it’s value and the work I put in acquiring it.
Ditto knowing when someone wants to eat at my table but doesn’t bring anything in return, be it a nod, a smile, a thanks, a kind word, help cleaning up after, or helping prepare the next meal.
So I’ve decided to build myself a table and be persnickety about who gets to sit there. You can read about it here.
September 2026 Announcements
| |
 |
Two New Trainings: How to Recognize BS Marketing and Save Yourself Time, Money, Frustration, and Embarrassment and How to Capitalize on BS Marketing and Make Some Money Off Other People’s Efforts to Scam You – How to Recognize BS Marketing: Authors get lots of offers to make their book a #1 Amazon BestSeller. I know because many authors and writers ask me to let them know if an email or website is BS or not.
Paraphrasing Somerset Maughm, sometimes recognizing fantasy from reality is like walking a razor’s edge. Authors want recognition for their work and for their time creating it. Scammers play on that because the desire for recognition is emotional, not logical, and the quickest way to someone’s wallet is through their heart, not their head.
But do you want to spend hundreds or more dollars on “Can’t Miss!” schemes that can’t even find the target?
I spent 25+ years helping companies from Mom&Pops to F100s develop their marketing, and most of that time was helping them recognize fantasy from reality, wheat from chaff, bullshit from possibility, and one of the tools we developed analyzed web and email material then determined its BS level (with a 95+% accuracy).
I’m putting together a training to help authors recognize BS from reality quickly and easily. Cost is 100$US for one (1) hour, and my trainings usually run overtime.
The second part of this is How to Capitalize on BS Marketing and Make Some Money Off Other People’s Efforts to Scam You and focuses on finding the good stuff buried in the BS. There’s a reason precious things are often buried or made inobvious by their surroundings. Want to learn how to pan for gold without getting wet? Here’s a course about that. It’s also 100$US for one hour, will also probably run longer.
Let me know if you’re interested. I’ll invite you to bring the offers you’ve received via phone, email, text, or DM, and teach you how to analyze them so you’ll know how to spot the dirt from the gold, and then I’ll show you how to extract the gold they gave you for free. |
|
| |
Writers’ Month Long Workshop – October 2026’s writers’ workshop covers many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The workshop is on Wednesdays, 7-28 October 2026, morning and evening openings available.
Sign up here.
You can an idea of what craziness (and learning!) will ensue on my Experiments in Writing posts. |
 |
|
| |
 |
Sister Rika Chandra’s moments in life that really test one’s resilience. – This month Rika writes about unweeing cats, the wisdom of mothers, and homeopathic cures which do more than heal. Read and subscribe to her newsletter, and while you’re there enjoying her musings, recognize the quality of her storytelling, read up on her offerings, and consider how what she can do for you, your career, and family. |
|
| |
Talk with the Editors – Wilderness House Literary Review EIC Steve Glines and I (Senior Fiction Editor) hold monthly open chats with authors interested in a) writing for us, b) improving their craft in general, and/or c) increasing their chances of being accepted by other markets.
Meetings are held via Zoom on the last Friday of each month from 9-10amET.
So, want to know how to write for us? Want to know what gets our attention? Want to know how to write better for whatever market you’re interested in? Join us for our next “Meet the Editors” Zoom session. Seats limited! Sign up and talk with us. We’re relatively easy going and fun to be with. |
 |
|
| |
 |
Writers’ WorkGroup Forming – My quest for community continues. I’m forming a writers’ workgroup. There’s no set agenda. Sometimes we may critique each others’ work, sometimes we may tell each other jokes, sometimes we may share marketing opportunities. Meetings will be once or twice a month via Zoom.
Entrance into the group is quite strict; I either have to know you and your work or you have to prove to me you’re serious about your writing career.
Please note that my familiarity with you and your work may be the reason I don’t welcome you into the group. |
|
| |
Crysalis is available as an eBook
Chrysalis is a story of personal recovery from childhood and adult trauma told in three parts:
The Echo
Welcome to My Sandbox
The Stone in God’s Sling
The Echo In a bizarre nightmare world, Gerrold is relentlessly attacked by groteques which thwart his every attempt at escape until an angelic being, Acquiesce, appears and offers him a way out. Acquiesce does not do the work of escape for Gerrold and instead guides him to make his own discoveries about escaping and what it means to be free. With Acquiesce’s help, Gerrold realizes escaping the nightmare means challenging the taking control of the nightmare and robbing it of its power over him.
Welcome to My Sandbox Freed from his personal hell, Gerrold realizes freedom comes with a price, and the price is to help others escape their personal hells. This means realizing some people would rather remain in their hells, meaning he is powerless to help him. But this confuses him; how can someone recognize they’re in hell and not want to escape?
Acquiesce explains freedom is a choice, that every moment of a person’s life is a matter of choice, and freedom’s responsibilities can be frightening to those not willing to do the work of healing and compassion.
This revelation causes Gerrold to realize some responsibilities are obvious, some are hidden, and now he wonders if he’s fully paid the price of his freedom. He decides to confront the source of his nightmare to learn the truth of it.
The Stone in God’s Sling Gerrold travels to his nightmare’s source and faces its creator only to discover he has constructed the nightmare himself. Can Gerrold destroy the part of himself which has imprisoned him, set himself free, and heal from the things he’s let happen?
Fans of Guillermo del Toro’s and M. Night Shyamalan’s work will appreciate this dark psychological fantasy which forces the reader to recognize their own hells and offers paths out of them. |
 |
|
| |
 |
The Absolute Limit of Sound needs first readers This one’s vexing me, folks.
Synopsis: A scientist seeking a way to feed the world inadvertantly creates a terrible weapon. Think Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake meets H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Absolute Limit of Sound is 9,400k words, either long story or novelette length. Email me if you’d like to be a first reader, let me know what needs fixing, and how to fix it. |
|
| |
Sister Vineeta Kommineni’s Zen Citizen Overhauls Government Bureaucracy Vineeta writes
After months of chasing data and analysing the process, we got BDA decision-makers on board for a complete overhaul of a decades-old citizen service. Now we’re waiting for the changes to go live on Seva Sindhu.
Zen Citizen had previously uncovered the end-to-end issues in a BDA citizen service through conversations with data entry operators, case workers and citizens, as well as by trying out the process ourselves. We also requested quantitative data in parallel to validate and quantify what we had uncovered. We are attempting to change a decades-old process, and we needed a strong evidence base before seeking the attention of senior officers and building consensus to implement the changes.
It took weeks and weeks of back-and-forth with multiple Govt. bodies to get the data, and equally importantly, clarifications on the meaning of each column, the nuances in interpretation, what each coded value or field name represents, data exceptions, and so on.
For the longest time, every question travelled through a long chain: Zen Citizen -> BDA IT Team -> another Govt. team’s BA (internally: BA -> Tech Lead -> BA) -> BDA -> finally back to Zen Citizen. Every follow-up question went through the same channels. This process also relies on every person in the chain promptly forwarding the response, which isn’t always practical to expect. Added to this the pedantic checking and re-checking of everything with the team – any error in interpretation can lead to a disproportionate loss of trust in Zen Citizen.
Zen Citizen is lucky to find volunteers who care enough to sweat the small stuff. Data cleaning is anything but glamorous, especially for a volunteer role, but Shivani Rai took on this painstaking task with great enthusiasm.
Thanks to Mr. Pavan Kumar’s help, we managed to snag an appointment with the decision-making team. We had a PPT ready with the story and supporting numbers, but when we heard, “Madam, you have 5 minutes,” the deck was abandoned and we opened the dashboard thoughtfully curated by volunteer Swapnil Dixit.
The stakeholders’ eyes lit up when they saw the dashboard: median application processing time, rejection rates, Sakala compliance, reasons for rejection – all laid out clearly, with the ability to slice and dice the data by zone and type of site.
The changes we’ve proposed and that have been accepted amount to a complete overhaul of the process. We’ll share the details once implementation on the Seva Sindhu portal is complete.
Read more on Zen Citizen’s website. |
 |
|
| |
|
|
| |
A Little Game – A concern with AI systems is how to instill morals and ethics. Makes me realize translational research is dead because we’re attempting to teach human values to a non-human entity and such concerns are answered with a basic understanding of Semiotics and Probability Calculus.
Bored yet? Here’s a typical AI morals and ethics challenge: A car is about to crash into a group of pedestrians, all of whom will die from their injuries.
You can divert the car so none are harmed, but by doing so the car will crush and kill someone’s pet.
Do you save the people or the pet?
Now change it up. The pet is yours and has been with you for years, trusts you, gives you unconditional love, is always there for you, and is healthy and playful.
Do you save your beloved pet or the people?
Change it up again. It’s not a pet, it is a old person walking with a cane, obviously uncomfortable in their body, but who’s known, loved, respected, and whose work has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Do you save the old person or the others?
Another change. The person is a child, full of life and full of promise.
Do you save the people or the child?
One more change. The person is someone you know and who treated you poorly, perhaps took advantage of you, definitely hurt you in some way, shape, or form.
What do you do?
The first five people who get back to me with their thoughts get a signed Chrysalis ebook. |
 |
|
That’s it for September. See you next month!
Enjoy!
No Responses