Lies, The Universe, and Everything in Between

A blog, really a blog post, while the world every day seems to turn itself deeper into the deep pile of shit that is current reality. As if this current stretch of the cosmos has really bad vibes.

It is something I find myself pondering about often. Not that the cosmos has bad vibes, but that some people actually have that as an explanation. ‘Bad times give bad people.’ That's a bit of a WTF moment, as the bad times are 100% our responsibility, and the bad people made by those bad times are basically our own fault.

I love to write about that strange place between karma and reality. (As I realise my hypothesis about human nature is as flawed as any hypothesis about human nature.) I simply do not understand fully why people so easily let go of that we consider making us human, neither do I blame them as that is not for me to do.

In my Tales Beyond the Madness, or Reels of the Living, the most awful people have a definite reason to be awful, and if you look closely, the awfulness is usually limited. In Butterflies, it is contained in order to take care of his loved ones. In The Maggot Trader, he does feed a whole village. setting aside, if there was such a person who sold wheat to impoverished people but fertilized it with recently departed hunger victims, I wonder how many people would consider him a bad man, and how many a functional hero.

If it is my fascination with human morality and the unbelievable flexibility we can show in those morals, or the stretch ethics have when we put them under stress, both have the same outcome. How many of those morals or ethics (stealing, murder, greed, etc.) are flexible and dependent on the conditions we are currently in?

How deep are your morals? Would you do the worst in order to save your loved ones? In All Six Made a Choice, it is exactly that which I put under stress. The most terrible thing we humans can do: is it learned or a survival mechanism? Could you do it if life offered no other options?

Let me end with the update I came to blog about. How am I progressing? The four writing projects so far:

Tales Beyond the Madness: A collection of post-apocalyptic stories that stretch morals and ethics. Currently under review by an editor. With her feedback, I will polish the stories, then figure out if I will publish them.

Reels of the Living: A post-apocalyptic novella set in the same world after the Madness. This is one step beyond the Tales. I need to do a proper edit pass and then probably send it to a professional. Then decide if I publish them or just put them somewhere for free.

The Grimm Faery: Fairy tales reimagined in my own messed-up mind. I am still drafting (that means writing) the stories here. Currently, I am in the middle of Rumplestiltskin. I will need at least four more. Some are submitted to anthologies. I hope to have an update or another story to show you next month. On this site I did post A Hood Of Red and Hairy Jetta check it out.

The Seen of Al-Sirrah: I am halfway through this Lovecraftian novel(la). To be honest, I am struggling with the story a bit, so perhaps I need to rewrite it.

See you next month.

As always, thanks for reading.

Vesper