About Me

My photo
Family and Friends is my everyday journal. Captain's Log is where I pontificate on religion and politics.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

WC Have you had a real-life encounter with a ghost?

 

Today's challenge is: Have you had a real-life experience with a ghost?

The answer is no. I have been in some really spooky situations and places, but no ghost.

My wife told me that in the night she saw her father looking down on us, then we got a call that he died around that time.




Hank Bruce, a member of Writers2writers, and his wife Tomi Jill Folk (editor) have a new book out that I had the honor of being a beta reader. Tomi recounted that while visiting this archaeological site of a former pueblo, that while walking up to it from the road there is a small pool of water, and whenever they visit this place at the water, she can hear women and children splashing and playing there.


Dr. Irene Blea, also a member of Writers2writers, had finally published her autobiography. Before Covid when W2W was meeting we read and commented on each other's work, this was what she was working on. It's not available yet as e-book. She grew up in the 1940's and 50's on a subsistence farm/ranch in northern New Mexico in an extended family speaking Spanish and some Tiwa (Taos Pueblo). She mentions that at night the children would hear spirits and they never saw them because they hid under their blankets. 


In my book Vander's Magic Carpet, Eugene Vander's has just finished his invention of flying plates that can levitate any object, like a car and make it fly. He goes to the graves of his wife and daughter. They appear and he takes them on a magic carpet ride. That's as close as I've come to writing a ghost story or encountering a ghost.


Human Sacrifices has the protagonist seeing a demon chewing on gang bangers in a park. The demon she names Mal haunters her for part of the book, but I make it plain that she was suffering from Post-Traumatic Trauma Stress, and hallucinating from lack of sleep. 






Wednesday, October 19, 2022

WC: Fantasy animals you'd like to be real

 




That's and easy one for me, I want a fire lizard. Everyone is so caught up in dragons, especially since GOT. To me the most enjoyable books of Anne McCaffrey's Pern books were the Harper Hall books with Menolly as the protagonist.

Keep your fire breathing dragons, a nice friendly fire lizard that you can have a mental connection too is by far the best.


Another one would be the Luck Dragon from Never Ending Story. Not your typical dragon.


Then again there's Buckbeak, from Harry Potter. He may be a little too temperamental for the average person or family and with that appetite could be very expensive.


Wednesday, October 05, 2022

 




So much of Star Trek with its communicators, tablets, talking computers, medical technology has already happened.

No, we don't have warp drive, photon torpedoes and spaceships capable of traveling the galaxy with a crew of 500. 3D printing is coming close to fabricators, just not for food yet.

Of all the technology I would like the transporter. 

It would be great to step onto the pad and I'm in the office, or at the mall, or at Roadhouse Steakhouse. A few jumps and I'm visiting my brother in Oklahoma.

In voyager one of the women has a baby delivered by transporter. I remember all the women and they were the majority in the teacher's lounge saying, "That's the way to have a baby!" or words to that affect.