https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/opinion/jd-vance-cat-ladies.html
I need my fiction to stay ahead of reality. This “parents > childless” underlies the tenet in my books of “get and keep women pregnant at any cost.” Childlessness is supposed to be the precursor to pregnancy, as women’s reproduction volition ends only when menopause has run its course.
The coming four years might just exceed my most dystopian fiction.
In A Day at the Zoo, the murder occurs at the Cameron Zoo in Waco.
The Shmuley Myers murder mystery series stars…Shmuley as the investigating detective. For crimes involving the unborn, the Preborn Investigation Bureau has jurisdiction. This might take the load off law enforcement in this reality, of the case of yet another woman, this one in Nevada, charged with “murdering”–via miscarriage. One must investigate, of course.
Next week, Americans get to decide what the path will be for true liberty for its citizens–particularly for non-whites who aren’t male. Do the right thing–even if you have to hold your nose. A stink versus enduring a four-year flood of effluence really isn’t a choice.
Apologies to “The Princess Bride,” but, were it not deadly serious, moving IVF containers from one state to another because of Alabama’s ruling that embryos are people.
How would these scraps of cells be seen as they move from Red States to Blue ones? Kidnapping? Whose names should we put on milk cartons?
What we’re seeing is a fast trot to the work of Shmuley Myers, where women need to find ways to escape their own state in order to control their bodies.
In other news, book #4 is well underway and the publishing date is set for sometime in December. It will have new…points of view compared to the first three books in the series.
The 14th amendment is being weaponized to bring reality into the Shmuley Myers universe.
The debacle that was the 2024 election in the United States, which is now devolving into a garbage fire on considerable proportions, is an example of an inflection point in history.
For the Shmuley Myers universe, that was when Ralph Reed’s Moral Majority managed, in a lightning swoop, to pass the ill-fated constitutional amendment stating not only that life begins at conception, but also that citizenship is awarded at that time. Turning every non-live birth into a murder investigation, and triggering the kinds of anti-birth control, pro-taming and -controlling of women that even Margaret Atwood’s writings and the fantasies of religious extremists in the Philipines could not match.
I hope the American people veer from the absurdist Calvinist principles that have brought us to this precipice and embrace the idea that a plurality of views, religions, and mores beats the monolith of the fascism of the “majority” (or rich).
September 6-8 are the dates for this awesome convention featuring slews of writers, their fans, and those interested in the business and practice of writing. Events include:
For all details head out to https://armadillocon.org/d46/. And check out ongoing updates at their blog.
The last eight months have been a slow-motion horror show for me. Between the horrifying massacre of Israelis in October and the brutal war that still follows, to watching the Israeli government slide toward totalitarianism and fascism — not to be outdone by the insanity that is the American 2024 election cycle — I’m left raw and empty. July 4th for me, this year, reminds me how far the country has slid from the idea of a United America that is celebrated “just like every year.”
The Shmuley Myers series is about murder: whodunnit, whydunnit, and all that. Seeing the hatred and violence playing out on the two stages I care about wears me down. Who wants to swim in the bloody seas of a murder investigation on top of all that reality?
I know Ukrainian authors who stopped writing some of their books because they were dark even before the Russian invasion. I didn’t understand it at the time, but, unfortunately, I do now.
The fourth book, A Measure of Mercy, touches on that quality. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, but not the glory of gory that can be part and parcel of that genre. There’s more loving and understanding enmeshed with the sadness brought on by violence smashing into a family.
I’ve picked up the (virtual) pen again, hoping I can inject, at least myself, with some recognition that Rachamim–mercy, not pity–will be my anodyne for the coming months.
This past Friday evening I read from A Day at the Zoo alongside three other authors. I went last, as I wasn’t sure what the crowd was like–or what I really wanted to read. It went excellently, the barometer for which was selling three sets of the books and giving another set to the library for others to enjoy.
The readers showed up with lots of goodies, so we had a sweets break between each author.
A third state has another tie to bind a woman to a pregnancy (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/15/missouri-law-divorce-pregnancy-violence-abortion). Pregnant in Missouri and want a divorce? Nope, not until the baby is born. I mean, whose body is this, anyway? Keep in mind not all religions have the same laws regarding abortion. But freedom in the US is supposed to be unfettered by religion–it says so in the constitution. Actually, this law violates the 14th Amendment that ended slavery. Because a person disempowered from movement or freedom from violence is, indeed, enslaved.
