What is the name of the cruel computer deity?

It never fails. If it’s a critical time with a manuscript, I will have a computer issue. This week I’m doing the editor’s changes to THREE FORTUNES IN ONE COOKIE, next year’s release from Tim and me. For the first time in weeks and weeks, my computer locked up. Seems to be okay now, but you can bet that next week when I need to print and ship? It’ll be something else.

they wanted to go to church

At the Living Church of God in Brookfield, Wisconsin, on March 12, 2005, a church member used a 9mm Beretta handgun to fire 22 rounds into the congregation, killing the minister and six others, including the minister’s son. Four others, including the minister’s wife, were wounded, one critically. The perpetrator shot and killed himself midway through the second of the three magazines he had brought with him.

The victims were:

• Gloria Sue Critari (55 years old)
• Harold Diekmeier (74)
• James Isaac Gregory (16)
• Randy Lynn Gregory (51)
• Gerald Anthony Miller (44)
• Bart J. Oliver (15)
• Richard Reeves (58)

When Your Subconscious Mind Speed Dials Your Conscious Mind

I try not to share my longass dreams very often, because dreams are generally more interesting to the dreamer than to anyone else.

But in my last moments before waking, I dreamed that Tim and I worked for the current occupant of the White House. We were doing PR for a government program we really believed in and were talking to a group of people about it. A journalism professor walked into the room with a large poster and a candle. The slogan on the large poster said, “Thirty-five years ago, I carried this in protest.” Beneath that was a smaller poster that said, “GET OUT OF VIETNAM NOW.” He had crossed out VIETNAM and written IRAQ. He sat down on the floor in front of us with his candle and faced a mostly hostile group. Tim and I looked at each other a moment then, without a word, we both slid out of our chairs and sat down next to him, knowing that was the end of our employment.

My dream switched to election day, year unknown, and I was looking at results on TV that said Bush had received 8% of the vote. I frantically looked at the other candidate’s name to determine which election it was and saw, “Gore, 90%.” And in that split second before I woke up, I was happy because it was like rewinding a tape to a world before 2001.

It’s like government subsidies

It is to be hoped that everyone within the Times-Dispatch’s
circulation area
is on amazon.com right now ordering Greg Herren’s books to see what all the fuss is about. I’m currently looking up places that may refuse to let Famous Author Rob Byrnes as well as Almost As Famous As Rob Byrnes Author Timothy J. Lambert appear. It’s great when the Frantic and Fearful do your public relations for you, no?

I’m no graphics genius, but…

Saturday Tom and I had lunch with three of the eleven liberal Democrats we know in Texas, one of whom is a librarian. We talked about Rep. Gerald Allen’s attempt to remove and bury any GLBT-themed books now in the public libraries of my home state of Alabama.

I mentioned that I was envious that author Michael Holloway Perronne had sent Rep. Allen a shovel along with a copy of his book A TIME BEFORE ME. My friend Christine suggested a little photo doctoring of Timothy and me, and the result is what I like to think Rep. Allen might call “Unamerican Gothic.”