Ramblings of a Middle Aged Lunatic

            Talent is overrated.             And I say this having been told I was a talented writer all my life.             We all have this image of the talented person.   Born with a gift, a natural ability to play basketball, the piano, sing, act, whatever it is they do well.   They enjoy a brief spurt of elementary school attention, then…nothing.   Because they move on to high school, or college, and now there are others who are just as talented as they are, maybe even more.   Most of them fade into obscurity like everyone else.               Yes, there are those blessed few, the ones that are plucked from the stage of a middle school production of Grease to become an Academy Award winning actor, but the odds of that happening to the average American is probably one in like, twenty million.   The odds of it happening to you is slim.   Leaving you with a broken dream and a vague sense that you could have been a contender, had the stars aligned.             Talent

   Well, for me, anyway.   My (fifth)? book has been released in the Kindle Store.  Titled Lost in Hardyland , it follows the life of twelve year old Zoey Hardy, a child genius who recently lost her mother and now has to live with her predominantly absentee father, an ordinary man with two other "normal" kids.  I actually had a lot of fun writing this book, which has more of a "feel good" vibe to it than my other works.  The world I created was so attractive to me, I wish I could live there forever.  It was quite an escape.  Ironically, the main character is grieving for her mother, and my own mother died suddenly a week after I finished the first draft.    It's currently priced at 2.99, but I'm planning to do a launch of some sort Father's Day weekend, since the book is about fathers and daughters.  I'm also currently running a Goodreads Giveaway, giving away one hundred free copies, in about the same time frame, so either way, you can get you

Tell me this hasn’t become a common scenario.                   You’re browsing your newsfeed, and you stumble upon a request for money, usually in the form of a Go Fund Me account.   A child has died, and the family doesn’t have the funds to bury her.   A person has been stricken with cancer, and subsequently fired from their job.   Someone’s house burned down, and they lost all their possessions.   A litany of human grief and suffering.                   And then there are those other people requesting money.                 You know the type.   You’ve encountered it at least once.   Someone is asking for help to pay for their daughter’s prom dress, or a plane ticket to attend a family member’s wedding, or the bicycle Petey always wanted.   You contribute, because their story tugs at your heartstrings.   Gosh, it’s so sad that Lois, a single mom, can’t afford to give her daughter the prom night of   her dreams!                   Then a couple of days, or a week, or a mo

                I think modern religion has it all wrong.                 I think they have it wrong about a whole slew of things, but the major issue is this notion that all the good people on earth that follow God’s laws are going to Heaven.                   We’re not supposed to be going to Heaven.    We’re supposed to be making Heaven.   Right here on earth.                 God is not a superior supreme all-seeing being watching and judging all that we do, including our very thoughts.   God is us. The good part of us, the positive energy in the universe.   We have been given the earth.   We can either make it Heaven or Hell.   The choice has always been ours.   Heaven is not a distant destination where people fly around with harps and sing, nor is it some other dimension where you meet past loved ones.                 There is no afterlife.   There is only here.   You can’t meet your loved ones after death because nothing truly dies.   Matter can neither be cre

Here's a sneak peek of my new book, coming soon.  It's about a child genius who is forced to live with her estranged father following her mother's death, and the struggles facing her living with an ordinary man who just doesn't understand. Vivisepulture.                 “Can you use it in a sentence?” the boy with the glossy straight black hair asked, pushing his glasses up his nose.   Peter Wong.   That was the name written in block letters on his nametag.                 We were the only ones left on stage.   The footlights glared down on us, blinding me.   All I saw when I looked at the audience were blobs instead of faces.   Perhaps on purpose, so we won’t get stage fright.   My mother told me what to do if I got overwhelmed staring out at so many faces.                   “Fix your gaze to a point above everyone’s heads,” she’d instructed.                 Since I couldn’t see individual faces, I pretended she was there, watching.   We had been prepar