New website!

Warning: If you're not an RPG gaming geek, run now.
A few months back I started a project called "The Amalgaverse Project" on the Palladium webboards. I promised people I'd put it up on the internet.
It took a while, with everything else going on, but it was a personal project I wanted to complete. It is a work in progress and there are still some gaps to fill, but the lions' share of the work is done.
I ended up going a step further and buying my own domain! I want a site that's easy to find, unique and vibrant. I hope it fits the bill.
So if you like Palladium games, and especially if you like their Robotech and other "space"-based science fiction lines, check out the Super-Nexus, and the Amalgaverse Project therein.

Feast or famine

I've probably mentioned it before, but the one thing about the writing business that really irks me is the "Feast or Famine" way things seem to work out. Earlier this summer, my calender was an empty desolate wasteland where writing projects dared not rear their heads.
But in August the dam broke and I've been riding this strange wave ever since.
I finished a book in November but am awaiting rewrites from my publisher that I'll have to do. He's swamped with the Christmas season, which has left me on pins and needles. I so badly want to see my name on the spine of a book soon. Last time I talked with him he was saying Spring or Summer. But his company is notorious for running behind, so I'm cautiously optimistic for fall or winter 2007. Well, a lot of that is allegedly due to the authors running behind, but I got him a full manuscript that's not only ready to go but professionally proofread and edited as well (rae is a proofreader at the same financial company I work for and took hours to read through every page). Clean, good copy in about three months. Right at the deadline he asked for. He wants some changes, but that's to be expected. It's the first time we've worked together. The faster he gets them to me, the faster I can see my name on a shelf.
He must have liked it to some degree because he gave me the go-ahead to start working on a second book with another writer. So I've started on that book this month.
On top of that, an old friend of mine who is an artist for an art studio reconnected with me. The studio wants he and I to resurrect an old comic book idea we had. They want some script and pages to look at in a few weeks. The artist has reimagined the project and I've had a couple hundred pages of back story and character profiles to read through....written by an artist who, bless his heart, has great ideas but is not a writer. Fortunately, he's a kick ass artist.
On top of that I've got a smaller project from the same studio that's a collaboration of writer's and artists for a periodical that's put out by the publisher I did the first book for. So that's four concurrent writing projects going at the same time.
This is, of course, on top of a 40-hour a week job editing financial statements for one the top 20 largest accounting firms in the country, which decided to make this month the month they switched over to an entirely new, paperless, document system.
Oh, and as if that weren't bad enough, a friend turned rae and I onto World of Warcraft.
Sleep? What's that?

Makes you wanna swear

"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." -- Article VI, Section 3 of the United States Constitution.

Why is it the people who claim to be the most patriotic, and wave the flag the most, seem to be the most ignorant of the laws, foundations, and motivations of our country?
Sometimes, someone says something so dumb that you have to do a double-take and you try to convince yourself that you misheard it.
While I'm sure such examples crop up by the hour, in this case I'm referring to the outcry at the request of incoming Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Ellison, a muslim, wants to take his oath of office on the Koran and not the bible. Since he's muslim, and not christian, him swearing in on the bible makes about as much sense as having him sworn in on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Seems pretty open and shut, especially given the EXTREMELY specific constitutional statement that there should be no religious test for public office.
But, in a clear case of "stupidity knows no bounds," somebody had to protest, of course.
Among many, that somebody included Dennis Prager, who wrote a column stating that Ellison should not be allowed to swear in on the Koran because it would undermine American civilization.
Prager wasn't the only one, just the loudest. And it's not an issue of "right vs. left" as Prager got slammed by Right-leaning columnists as much as he did by the Left.
If anything, Ellison should be commended. He could have just taken the oath on the bible, but instead, he seems to actually want his oath to mean something.
Prager has backtracked recently, claiming, again erroneously, that it's a matter of the U.S. being based on the bible, making it the country's de facto Holy Document.
But again, he runs into a little brick wall I like to call historical fact.
U.S. Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, near the end of George Washington's last term as president, was intended to outline the nature of the U.S. to foreign countries. It states, in no uncertain words,
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;"
As you know, or should, foreign treaties are ratified by the Senate and signed by the president. They were all Founding Fathers, who had lived through the creation of our nation, headed by the leading figure of our country and it's first president. They agreed that the U.S. was not founded on Christianity.
While there is no doubt that Christianity influenced many aspects of the nation, our Founding Fathers came from an assortment of backgrounds, which included a few deists and a couple in-the-closet atheists. They went through great pains in numerous documents to distinguish that religion shouldn't be a factor in our governmental workings. There are endless reams of quotes from Jefferson, Franklin and Paine, among others screaming at us not to use religion as a measuring stick, standard, or test, for governmental action, influence or dogma.
It's all in writing, all over the place.
When Ellison swears in on that Koran, it won't be an erosion of American values. It will be an affirmation of them.