Wow, it’s been a while since I gave an update on what I’ve been up to. Life has been crazy, but not too crazy. I really ought to get back into the habit of blogging more regularly.
Last week was LTUE here in Utah Valley, and while I didn’t attend the convention, I did stop by the launch party for Ark Press. It looks like it’s going to be an interesting publishing venture, with Tony Daniels, Dave Butler, and David AF heading it out. Their goal is basically to be the MAGA of science fiction and fantasy publishing, though they probably wouldn’t put it quite that way. However, they do want to publish more pro-American, pro-conservative, pro-human fiction, and to fill a gap in the current publishing market that has neglected male readers in recent years.
They’re also running a contest, with the winner receiving a $10,000 publishing contract, to be published on July 4th, 2026. The theme for the contest is America 2076, and it can be any genre (though it sounds like they want it to be a pro-American story). Of all the WIPs I currently have floating around, The Road to New Jerusalem might actually be a good fit for that. I haven’t worked on it for a few months, but I’ll probably dust it off pretty soon here and get it ready to submit.
Speaking of my J.M. Wight pen name, I ran the first three chapters of The Fall of the Poet King through my writing group, and I think the best course of action is to rewrite it as a fantasy novel loosely based on the David and Bathsheba story. If I’m going to write it as a straight historical fiction, I need to do a lot more research to firmly ground it in the era, and the trouble with adapting a Bible story (especially a more difficult story like David and Bathsheba) is that everyone brings their own baggage or personal interpretation to it, and is liable to get miffed if your retelling doesn’t exactly match what they’ve got in their own head. Besides, fantasy sells a lot better than religious fiction, so I think this is a much more prudent course to take.
In fact, I’ve recently made an inventory of most of my WIPs, and decided to trunk all of them that don’t explicitly fall in the fantasy genre. I will still finish the Outworld Trilogy and the Falconstar Trilogy, but after that, I’m going to focus a lot more on writing fantasy than on writing science fiction. Also, I’m not going to work on those until after I’ve filled up my writing queue with more fantasy-oriented works. This is a pivot that I’ve been meaning to make for some time now, and I’ve been slowly making that pivot, but now I think I need to speed it up and make it more definitive.
So that’s what I’ve been up to, mostly. I’m currently finishing up the rough AI draft of The Unknown Sea, and plan to pick up the human draft of Bloodfire Legacy, which should be coming out in the Spring. And hopefully I’ll be working on that David and Bathsheba story again soon.
I was at LTUE, and went to the panel where Dave announced the contest. I may write something to enter; I like their tagline of ‘the humans win in the end’ and their intention in starting a new publishing house with stories that are both good literature and interesting to men (though of course, as a woman, I imagine I’ll also enjoy them).
David AF said specifically during their panel discussion that they’re not anti-woke; I think he’s hoping more for apolitical stories or at least for their focus to be on good storytelling no matter what the author’s personal beliefs. That, I can totally get behind!
>> … or at least for their focus to be on good storytelling no matter what the author’s personal beliefs. <<
That's Baen Publishing 🙂
Uh, how anyone at this point could describe MAGA as Pro-Human is insanity. The entire movement is based on hatred and rules by intimidation and fear. They’ve been shoving the most anti-children platform I’ve seen in my entire life time. Complete BS take there, Joe.
Wow, project much? You just described the current Democratic party.
Not a democrat. They aren’t currently in charge. Don’t speak to me about them. This is about MAGA and MAGA alone.
Non of this shit is “Pro-Human”:
Making it unsafe for immigrant children to worship with their religious congregations and go to school. Some of these immigrant children are the adopted children of American Citizens.
Separating children with birthright citizenship from one or both of their parents that have immigration papers in process. Separates a family and forces children into foster care unnecessarily. Raising the risk of them being abused exponentially.
The administration straight out and cancelling all legal representation for unaccompanied minor migrants.
The dismantling of USAID that will literally cause children, including newborns and infants, to starve to death and die.
The cuts to the department of education funding that support rural and poverty stricken schools so even the poorest and most isolated children in the United States can get an education.
The threat to eliminate the department of education entirely so that school districts across the US will no longer be held accountable to administer IEP and 504 plans that help students with medical issues and disabilities get fair access to education–the blind, deaf, diabetic, chronically, ill, autistic and MORE are collateral damage to your propaganda machine.
The cuts to medicaid that help children that are poor or disabled get medical care. NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT THE CUTS TO MEDICARE WILL OUTRIGHT BANKRUPT RURAL HOSPITALS AND CHILDREN’S HOSPITALS.
The freezing of grants given through the national science foundation and national institute of health that were given out to hospitals. Including some of the top Children’s hospitals in this nation. These hopsitals were studying how to prevent and cure diabetes, cancer, and other genetic illnesses. My son has Cystic Fibrosis. The hospital he attends will be directly affected by the funding freeze. I have spent hours of my life walking the halls of his hospital and encountering disabled and chronically ill children. DO NOT MESS WITH THEIR FUCKING MEDICAL CARE.
This funding Freeze and firing scientists will delay lifesaving and life lengthening medications from getting to children with chronic illnesses. I know because I waited six years for the medication trikafta to be approved for my son. I cannot imagine the devastation I would have felt if that process was delayed by this administration.
I’m not even done yet.
Hegseth getting up in front of the world and saying the US does not intend to follow Geneva convention. So, now we’re going to kill woman and children in war zones?
They want to cut snap benefits and make it impossible for children to buy candy or sweets. Because poor children don’t deserve cakes or party treats for their birthdays or Christmas. They don’t deserve to participate in giving their classmates candy for Valentine’s day either.
Not to mention that firing staff at national parks makes it so that there is no one knowledgeable about the area to help find lost children or wandering elderly people. There won’t be Rangers who know parks like the back of their hands to aid search and rescue missions. These are dangerous wilderness areas, especially for children and elderly, and they will now be less safe.
The current medical infrastructure is not built to support non-vaccinated populations. If you want to return to the days when 50-75% of children DIED before their fifth birthday due to infectious diseases, that we can now vaccinate them for, then expect your hospitals to be overrun with children suffering from infectious disease. If your child had an ER emergency and needs to be seen within the “golden hour” to survive. Good luck. There won’t be enough hospital space to save them.
Gamila, it is clear from your comment that you have been grossly mislead and misinformed by those who are seeking to weaponize your emotional reaction to spread their disinformation. This is 5th gen warfare 101. Not that I can blame you–in 2020, we all lived through a military-grade 5th gen psyop, and are still reeling from the aftermath. But to answer more specifically:
ICE is not separating families, they are deporting families together. Those who want to immigrate to this country can and should do so through legal processes. Every illegal immigrant is, by definition, a criminal the moment they set foot on American soil. It is far more unsafe for native families to let this lawlessness continue than it is unsafe for illegal immigrant families to enforce the law. Are you familiar with the Lakan Riley story? Sadly, she is far from the only victim of illegal immigrant crime.
USAID was a front for the propaganda-industrial complex and Soros-aligned groups. Whatever their mission statement when they were founded, until just recently they existed primarily to launder taxpayer dollars for illicit purposes. In the name of helping poor starving children, they funneled BILLIONS to pro-transgender groups like Stonewall in the UK, which push radical transgender ideology that sexually grooms children and steals them away from their parents. I know about this because I have extended family members who are victims of this transgender radicalization. They also funneled BILLIONS to “independent media” such as Politico and the New York Times, effectively turning them into state media organs to push government disinformation–which they continue to do, as evidenced by your own media induced anti-Trump hysteria.
Eliminating the DOE is a brilliant move, and I hope that Trump does it. We had a much better education system before the DOE than we do today. Did you know that most college students today cannot pass an 8th grade final examination from the 1920s? No Child Left Behind has been a disaster, our public schools are failing, all the federal money we have thrown at it has only made things worse, and the public sector teachers unions are hands down the most evil organizations in this country (and that is really saying something!) Absolutely I am in favor of abolishing the DOE and leaving education to the states.
DOGE is not cutting Medicare. That is misinforation and a scare tactic meant to weaponize your alarm.
As for the NIH and the NSF, I am totally in favor of auditing those organizations because based on the insane amount of corruption DOGE has already uncovered, I have no doubt that those organizations are rife with corruption as well. And by the way, when you mingle science with politics, you don’t get good science–you get the kind of bad science like the lipid hypothesis that gave us the obesity epidemic and led our nutrition science in exactly the wrong direction for two generations. The biggest problem in science today is the replication crisis, and all of the federal money has not been able to resolve that. If anything, it has made that much worse.
I’m sorry to hear that you have a son who has a chronic health condition, and that you fear his treatment will be affected by these funding cuts. During the pandemic, hospitals were incentivized to kill hundreds of thousands of people by putting them on ventilators, which was a death sentence for many of them. Instead of saving these people, the hospitals saw each covid death as a money making opportunity and acted accordingly. I have read more horrific accounts of abuses like this from victims of our corrupt healthcare system than I can count. Point is, our healthcare system needs an overhaul. Without a major shakeup of the funding and monetary incentives, that overhaul cannot happen.
As for SNAP, why should my tax dollars pay for welfare recipients to become morbidly obese, only for them to become such a drain on the healthcare system that they drive up health insurance and make it unaffordable for those who are not trying to abuse the system? Sheesh, Gamila! “They want to… make it impossible for children to buy candy or sweets”–give me a break! Next you’ll unironically argue that Trump is killing puppies!
You want to talk vaccinations? Let’s talk about VERS and the Covid “vaccines.” My wife and I have done a lot of research on the subject, and I have come to the conclusion that our children will be safer if we don’t follow the current vaccination schedule. Hepatitis B is an STD–why are we vaccinating newborn children for it? Every one of these vaccines contains mercury, a known neurotoxin that is unsafe in any amount. One in 45 children who follow the modern vaccination schedule become autistic, likely due to the mercury exposure. But hey, Big Pharma made a lot of money during the pandemic, thanks to the emergency use authorization that absolved them of liability. They knew exactly what they were doing. After all, do you really think the pandemic was the first time they pulled something like this over on us?
And what are we getting in exchange for all of this? The repeal of Roe v. Wade, an anti-human and anti-life court decision if there ever was one. Men no longer competing against women in sports. The end of government DEI programs that pushed the most vile racism this country has seen since the end of Jim Crow. The return of the Israeli hostages from Hamas, the most barbaric group of savages this Earth has seen since the Battle of Cumorah (seriously, every single atrocity listed in Mormon 9 was committed by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. Every. Single. One.) We are also, finally, getting some accountability in government. In just the last few hours, Christopher Rufo revealed that several members of the intelligence community were using covert government channels to talk about their sexual perversions, including mutilation, castration, transgender reassignment surgery, gang rapes, and worse. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just fired them all and revoked their security privileges, thank God. It’s a good start, and I hope it continues well into the future. I am not yet tired of winning.
(By the way, my blog flagged your post because of the profanity. Frankly, if you have to resort to profanity in order to make your point, as far as I’m concerned you have already lost the argument.)
You people really cannot be helped. Enjoy the descent into living in a third world country. You choose to live in an alternate reality. If you think that the fact I used a swear world will erase the atrocities the administration has committed against the most vulnerable of God’s children, you’re going to have a really difficult judgement day. May God have mercy on your soul.
Gamila, I have no hard feelings toward you, and mean this in all sincerity. Get help.