From both of us\u2014and Dash, who is the sole surviving member of The Pack, as we called it when there were four of them, barking like they were seventeen and not four every time the doorbell rang.<\/p>\n
Ok, it\u2019s a day late, but still our best wishes to everyone who reads this blog and my books, or who just knows us from the good ol\u2019 days, most of which, while good, are getting pretty damn ol\u2019. 2026 is a significant year for us: Carol and I both graduated from grade school in 1966\u2014sixty years ago!\u2014and our fiftieth wedding anniversary falls on October 2 of this year. We\u2019re planning two parties: one here in AZ and another back in Chicago, where all of our surviving family lives.<\/p>\n
2026 is also the Semiquincentennial (half of 500, in other words) or maybe the Bisesquicentennial or Sestercentennial; take your choice. 250 years of protecting our rights as individual citizens of all categories from kings, arrogant royalty, ruling class slackers, dictators, and various other scum-of-the-earth species. Our nation has survived a long list of misleading and sometimes mass-murderous isms, and will continue to do so. This year we will celebrate our 250 years of victory.<\/p>\n
Here at home, I\u2019m deciding what major writing project to take on next. I have a little list, and a whole new concept sheet on The Molten Flesh, <\/em>which tops that list. My unfinished novel Old Catholics<\/em> predicts the first American pope\u2026a cardinal from Chicago<\/em>, yikes! I decided on that in 2005; if I publish it now, people won\u2019t believe that I predicted it 20 years ago. So it will probably stay on the shelf. Beyond that\u2026I\u2019m still thinking. Any decisions will be announced here, so stay tuned.<\/p>\n Health issues prevented me from getting a great deal done in 2025, though I managed to get The Everything Machine<\/em> into the Amazon gumball machine back in March. I rewrote and extended \u201cWhale Meat,\u201d and have two more finished works that I\u2019m not entirely sure what to do with: \u201cMorning Man\u201d and \u201cVolare!\u201d I wrote the first draft of \u201cMorning Man\u201d back in 1985, and it\u2019s about an AI who works as a DJ for a small-town radio station. That was science fiction back in 1985. I\u2019m not sure what to call it today. \u201cVolare!\u201d heh, not sure what to call it, either. I started it in the late 1980s and abandoned it. Earlier this year I finished it. It\u2019s a Simulation story, though that term did not exist in 1986. Once I can nail down a cover I intend to publish it as a standalone, 10,000-word novelette.<\/p>\n Beyond that, who knows? 2025 wasn\u2019t all bad, and 2026 should be better. Hang around. It\u2019s a beautiful world out there. Take in as much of it as you can, and celebrate your private triumphs. I\u2019ll be here cheering you on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From both of us\u2014and Dash, who is the sole surviving member of The Pack, as we called it when there were four of them, barking like they were seventeen and not four every time the doorbell rang. Ok, it\u2019s a day late, but still our best wishes to everyone who reads this blog and my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noneoftheabove"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5551,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions\/5551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}