This week hasn't been bad, but it's been long for some reason. I can't believe it's only been five days since the debate where Donald Trump got curb-stomped by a woman twenty years younger than him who isn't completely detached from reality. Oh, what a delightful change it was from the first debate. I'll readily admit Biden's obvious cognitive decline. If only Trump's worshipers would do the same. At this point, I find it very difficult to muster up a shred of respect for anyone who still thinks, even if they're willing to overlook his gargantuan moral deficiencies, that he's competent to run... well, anything. They're simultaneously saying that he won the debate and that Harris only won the debate because the moderators were biased, because she had the questions in advance, because her earrings were actually earpieces, and because she used witchcraft. Yes, really. It is most unfortunate that people who believe in witchcraft in 2024 have any political influence whatsoever, but here we are. Anyway, enough has been said about the debate that I don't feel a need to rehash all the reasons why Trump sucks. But wow, I feel so energized. I had little hope for my country's future a few months ago. Now I do. Harris isn't perfect, but compared to Trump, she's Jesus. The people who still think Trump is the lesser of two evils are the same people who think Zelenskyy is the aggressor in Putin's war.

Oh yeah, there is one other thing I wanted to say. I wanted to kiss both of the moderators, especially David, for actually fact-checking some of Trump's deranged bullshit. I didn't know that was allowed. Of course this made idiots think he was being persecuted, even though they also let him speak five and a half minutes longer than Harris and get the last word on EVERY SINGLE TOPIC. I'm not mad, though, because the more he talks, the more he sabotages his campaign. I was going to say "shoots himself in the foot," but that's too soon, right?

Yes, I thanked this mindless machine. I feel comfortable interacting with AI as if it were conscious, because it acts like it's conscious, and besides, this way its algorithms might tell it to be nice to me if it does take over the world.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. In June I wrote about my experience with a mushroom gummy that, unlike the first brand of mushroom gummies I tried, actually did something. But it seems I had a miscommunication with the friend who gave it to me, because when I asked her about it so I could get more (after waiting a couple months to make sure I'm not turning into a junkie), I learned it was actually a Kush Kube that contained Delta 9 THC and CBD. And I ate the whole gummy, but the recommended dosage, as I found out when I got more, was a quarter of a gummy. So yeah, I should have been more careful, but I survived. And the recommended dosage does almost nothing for me, so I'm back to full gummies. My second experience didn't last as long or contain any out-of-body stuff, so that was a disappointment, but it helped me sleep, and I'm desperate to fall asleep before two a.m. without taking melatonin or NyQuil every single night of my life, so that was great.

I made an appearance on JV Hillard's podcast, The Realm, to promote my book, Crusaders of the Chrono-Crystal.

I'm five hundred times more optimistic about the future of my country since last Sunday when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the prospective Democratic nominee for president. Trump is scared out of what little mind he has, and I'm so here for it. He calls her "Laughing Kamala" because he's a fucking toddler, and probably also because he doesn't know how to experience joy and hates anyone who does. Republicans call her a "DEI hire" because they can't use the n-word in public. They're obsessed with her real or perceived sex life because if there's one thing their candidate is known for, it's upholding conservative sexual morality. Their bigotry is infuriating, but their desperation and panic are hilarious. I can't wait to watch their demented felon/rapist/fascist candidate get curb-stomped by a Black woman. The cherry on top is him shooting himself in the foot (too soon? I don't care) by picking the least popular running mate in history for reasons that I'm sure made more sense when he was running against a man three years older than himself instead of a woman young enough to be his daughter. If she actually was his daughter, of course, he'd think she was hot.

In case I haven't made myself clear enough in the past, fuck Donald J. Trump and everything he stands for. I will go to my grave not understanding how so many ostensibly good people threw their principles in the trash and worshipped him. I was much, much more conservative in 2015 than I am now. I sincerely believed that from a policy standpoint, next to Clinton, Trump was the lesser of two evils. And I still never for one second considered voting for him because he was a garbage human. Why is that kind of integrity almost unheard of among the right wing? I don't get it. Well, the Republican Party made its choice, and now it's getting what it deserves for making such a terrible choice. It pledged its allegiance to someone who will bring it down with him. A majority of Americans will soundly reject its white Christian nationalist bullshit and teach it a lesson at the ballot box that it will never forget and hopefully never recover from. (I made sure to add "at the ballot box" to clarify that, unlike Trump and his ilk, I don't advocate for political violence.) Or maybe I've been lulled into a false sense of security and everything is screwed after all.

Donald Trump is not the lesser of two evils, even if all you care about is limited government. The Republican Party is not a party of limited government. It's the party of forcing their shitty "values" on everyone else and giving billionaires and corporations free reign to screw everyone else in every possible way. I have tried with no success to get my conservative family members to understand that. Trump has already tried to overthrow democracy with lies and an insurrection. His cult is already planning to say the next election was fraudulent when he doesn't win. It's already threatening civil war. He said this out loud the other day: "Get out and vote just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years it will be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. You've got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote." Some of his supporters now claim that was joking or that he didn't mean anything at all. I'm really fucking tired of being gaslit that he doesn't mean any of the racist/sexist/fascist/impossibly stupid things he says. And this from the same morons who worship him because he "speaks his mind." By this they clearly mean that by being a horrible person so proudly with no repercussions, he gives them license to feel good about also being horrible people.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but in summary, Harris for and Trump for president.

Yesterday I had a splendid time at the annual writing symposium at USU hosted by the League of Utah Writers. I'll keep my remarks brief because I don't see why I should share everything I learned with people who didn't pay the $30 fee.

First I attended Shaun Anderson's presentation "The Dark Arts: Unforgettable Villains." I saw Shaun went I went to eat on campus a couple of days before the event. We were in a class together nine years ago, but I've only talked to him a couple of times. Knowing that he was a part of this symposium and that he's been in charge of Helicon West, I thought of him as a "real" writer and myself, who's only recently started getting involved in such things, as a poser, but he admired that I'd published a full book while he hasn't yet, so that was some kind of poignant lesson about how we're too hard on ourselves or something. (He has published non-fiction pieces, like an essay about being a gay Mormon missionary that made a big impression on me when I was Mormon.) In this presentation, he suggested several questions we could use to flesh out our villains. I was struck by a perspective he shared that I'd never considered: by making a character a villain, we're asserting that they're wrong in some way, and thus making a statement about our own morality. Mind blown.

Bryan Young, who writes for Star Wars and other less important IPs, gave a presentation on "Captivating Character Creation." My favorite takeaway: we learn more about characters when they're forced to choose between two terrible options. Mind blown.

Bestselling author John D. Brown told us about how to keep readers hooked by triggering anticipation, hopes and fears, and/or puzzlement or mystery, and then delaying the payoff. It sounds simple enough, but the way he said it was more entertaining. He showed us a bunch of his Amazon reviews that said they couldn't put his book down, so he knows what he's talking about.

*Break for pizza*

Jennifer Sinor presented on "Scene, Summary, and Musing: Controlling Pace and Developing Depth in Prose." She started it the way she starts every one of her classes: by making us do breathing exercises to center ourselves and return to our bodies. This time, however, Russ Beck was presenting next door with his exceptionally loud voice, which made it difficult. She walked around barefoot while she talked, so I'd like to have a word with the anonymous creeper on Twitter who said that I'm weird for "wandering around shoeless" outside. I love Jennifer. So carefree, so compassionate, so spiritual. I hated the class I had with her as an undergraduate, but that had nothing to do with her as a person. The class I had with her in graduate school went much better. The essay I wrote in two parts, "Things That Rhyme with 'Elise,'" left an impression on her that she said she would think about for a long time. Her response to the second part still cracks me up in a sick kind of way. SPOILER ALERT:

Yeah, that makes two of us.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so then I went to another presentation by Bryan Young on "Setups, Payoffs and Endings." He mostly used movie examples in his presentations because he assumes we've seen more of the same movies than read the same books. I suggested Raiders of the Lost Ark as an example of a good ending, and then later he had a picture of the warehouse scene as the backdrop for one of his slides, so I nailed it. Key takeaway: problems with the ending are often actually problems with the beginning and the middle. And I'd already done the technique of writing the ending and then revising everything that came before so it all looks carefully planned and perfect, so it was nice to be validated in that.

Finally, I attended "Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary" by Shanan Ballam, which focused more on poetry but was still applicable to other things. ​Shanan had a stroke a couple of years ago and had to learn how to walk, talk, and write again. I'm inspired by her resilience and pleased that she continues to recover. I had two classes from her, Fiction Writing and Poetry Writing. One of them, probably Fiction, was the class I had with Shawn. As if the nostalgia factor wasn't high enough already, the notebook I used to take notes at this symposium was the one I had purchased for that class, used in that class, and then never written in again until yesterday. It still has the note in the front that she left after I wrote something that made her worry about me. I don't even remember what it was.

I had a note from my first class with Jennifer that I wish I could find because I think it was hilarious. It was something like, "Christopher - I'm not sure you understood the assignment - but you did it! 100"

There were also presentations entitled "Level Up Your Social Media," "Becoming Your Own Boss: Your Guide to Indie Publishing," and "Amazon Advertising Strategies" that I'm sure would have benefitted me because I suck at those things, but I was more interested in learning about the writing craft itself, because that's what I write for, so I'll just have to stay true to myself and face the consequences for sucking at the other bullcrap I have to do. The symposium was well worth the $30, and again, I regret that I'm just now getting involved in the local writing community and I'm going to move in a month.

I have nothing to say about this except that I don't want to watch it because I hate my voice and my mannerisms, but I request that both of my blog readers at least mute it and play it in the background to drive the views up. And then also buy my book if you haven't yet.

This week I had the opportunity to present to USU's creative writing club, the Bull Pen. I was honored to receive the invitation. As the meeting approached, I got ridiculously nervous considering that I taught writing classes at that university for years, and very briefly considered hiding somewhere instead of showing up. When I did show up anyway, I got more nervous because my former thesis chair had come to hear me speak, so now I had to impress him and not just the students. It went great. I'd intended to try to talk for twenty minutes and then let the students write stuff for the rest of the time, but then I started late to wait for some who got out of classes late, and then from the third slide onward they asked questions and made comments during my presentation, so that it turned into more of a discussion and filled up the entire remaining time. Someone told me afterward that he would incorporate my advice into his writing. That made me feel good. At least this one time, I had an influence on someone somewhere, and my existence wasn't pointless.

Here's my slideshow. I can't figure out how to embed it, though that should be possible with today's technology. I talked about incorporating humor into writing, and I used quotes from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series instead of my own writing because it's less egotistical and I don't like being the center of attention. I know, I'll have to get used to that if I have a successful career. I'll have to give more presentations, interviews, autographs, that sort of thing.

Of course, I had to plug my own book a little too, and I'll plug it again here. If you like humorous sci-fi fantasy adventure novels, check this one out at the following Amazon Affiliate link:

And tomorrow is Earth Day. Happy Earth Day. I'm going camping with friends. I expect that I'll have a lot of fun and lose a lot of sleep, leading to a lot of regret.