No Words

I’ve been walking around in a daze since I heard the news. My life is set on autopilot, just going through the motions. I’m not sure if the reality of the situation has even fully hit me yet, which is a scary thought when I consider how devastated I’ve felt since then.

Not long after, we gathered to celebrate her life. I wanted to speak. I wanted to stand up and tell everyone all about her. I wanted to tell everyone how great she was as a person and as a mom. I wanted everyone to know how generous, kind, and funny she was. I really wanted to.

Other people stepped up to speak, but I didn’t. I sat there clinging to my daughter, trying my hardest to keep her calm and stay strong for her. I didn’t completely succeed. I couldn’t stop all my tears from flowing and I certainly couldn’t ease the hurt she was feeling.

When it was over, I thought about why I didn’t step up to say all of the things I wanted to say. I told myself it was because I was trying to console my daughter, or that my brother had done such a good job when he spoke. While those things were true, neither of them were the real reason. No, the real reason that I couldn’t say those things was that it meant that I would also have to say goodbye.

But, how do I do that? How do I say goodbye to the woman who gave me life? How do I say goodbye to the woman who loved me since before I was born? How do I say goodbye to the woman who sacrificed so much, not only for me, but for all of her children and grandchildren? How do I say goodbye to the woman who was instrumental in me becoming the man I am today?

I can’t.

I can’t do it because there are no words. There are no words to tell her how much I love her. There are no words that can explain how much I’ll miss her. There aren’t any words that can adequately describe how much she has meant to me, how much better my life was because she was in it. No words can ever explain how much light she has brought into the lives of everyone she met.

Without the words, how could I say goodbye? How could I say something worthy of her? I can’t. It’s not possible.

Maybe, someday, those words will exist. Until then, I’ll have to settle for keeping it simple: I love you, Mom. I always will. There will never be a day that goes by when I won’t miss you and you will forever be with me in my heart.

The Information Broker

I know. I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. To be completely honest, I wasn’t even going to post this, especially after the week I’ve had, but I thought it might do good to post the only good news that I’ve gotten in a while.

Matticus and I have finally published the sequel to The Erratic Sun. It is called The Information Broker and you can get the Kindle version of it here. If you prefer paperback, then this is the link for you.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and our writing endeavors.

Southside Protector: Finale

Blood ran freely from Kennedy’s nose. She also had some dripping from the right side of her mouth and a cut on the left side of her forehead. That would probably be enough to keep most people out of a fight, but Protectors weren’t most people. They had training, and physical enhancements, that nobody else in the world had. Protectors could take and dish out more punishment than any other people on Earth.

That particular fact was both a blessing and a curse for Daniel Carter at this moment.
It was good because it allowed him to survive the punishment that he’d received at the hands of the dragon. Well, the legs of the dragon, he thought. Although, if Emmeline was to be believed, he reminded himself, the dragon had sat on him, so perhaps ‘the ass of the dragon’ would be more apt. The more he thought about it, however, he didn’t ever want to tell people that he’d received punishment from a dragon’s ass, so he decided to stick with ‘hands of the dragon’.

Now that he’d cleared that up in his mind, he turned to the curse part of the equation. That part was how that same Protector enhancements allowed Kennedy to recover from the beating he had given her and attack his ally Robbie. At the moment, Robbie was still alive, but he was hurt pretty badly. Kennedy stood over him with a knife. She reached down and, with the extra strength of a Protector, picked Robbie off the ground to use him as a human shield.

Daniel didn’t hesitate.

Southside Protector: Chapter 9

The explosion happened closer to him than he was expecting. In fact, it probably happened the moment the RPG armed, or the millisecond after. Shrapnel pelted his armor, but not much. The blast of an RPG is designed to go in the same direction as the explosive was going. Still, the shockwave thudded in his chest and made it hard for Daniel to breathe for a few seconds.

The dragon, on the other hand, shrieked. Its body began to flail about. Daniel wondered if it was in its death throes, but the cloud of fire retardant chemicals still made it more difficult to see everything. All he saw was the vague shape of the dragon moving about erratically.

Suddenly, he found it difficult to breathe again. It wasn’t the shockwave or the chemicals that did it this time, although they didn’t help. It was the dragon leg that hit him squarely in the chest. He went flying backwards out of the cloud until he slammed into the armored vehicle. Stars appeared in his vision as he landed in a sitting position and he hoped he wouldn’t black out.

Beside him, he saw Kennedy begin to stir. That wasn’t what he needed at that moment. He was having enough trouble trying to fight the dragon. Adding Kennedy back into the mix wouldn’t do him any good. His hand reached over and grabbed a handful of Kennedy’s hair. Daniel pulled her closer to him, positioned her head under his armpit, and fell with all the weight he could muster to land on her face.

Game of Thrones

It seems like half of my newsfeed on Facebook the past couple of weeks has been about Game of Thrones. Out of those posts, half of them were talking about how they’re excited for this new season, while the other half are bragging about how they’ve never seen a single episode. In fact, I think five different friends of mine posted the same picture that said “I’m part of the 1% of the population that hasn’t seen a single episode of Game of Thrones”. Given how many people I’ve seen share that picture, I doubt the validity of the math on that one.

I, myself, am in the latter group. I have never seen an episode of the show.

When it was only a season or two along, I was thinking about giving it a try. Then, in an ironic twist, it was somebody who was trying to talk me into watching the show that ended up talking me out of it. He said, and I quote, “You should watch Game of Thrones. It’s a good show, once you get past the incest.”

Ummmm…… excuse me?

Incest? No thanks. I’ll just be over here in the incest free zone.

Those Were the Days

While going through some boxes that were in my closet, I came across an old binder with a folder and some papers in it. I opened it up to see what was inside. It was a bunch of old character sheets from D & D. Some of them were filled out. Some of them were blanks.

I took a few minutes to look at some of the characters I had created.

There was Shade Bladesinger, a Neutral Evil halfling Bard/Assassin. Another was Danalia, the chaotic good female half-elf who was part fighter, part cleric. Hell, there was one character that had 5 different classes. I don’t remember ever playing that one, but that sounds like it would suck to play. Even at high levels, it would be someone who could do a lot of little things, but nothing very powerful. “Look! A dragon! I’ll do one point of damage to it with my magic missile!”

I remember my D & D playing days fondly, for the most part. Yeah, there were some problems with other players on occasion, but overall they were fun times. It was freeing to let your imagination run wild while chance dictated your moves. Before my original gaming group went to shit, that was probably the most fun I’ve had playing any kind of game.

Then, life and time happened.

I would like to play a tabletop RPG again, whether it’s D & D or something else. The problem is finding the time and the right people to play the game with.

Unfortunately, I don’t see either of those things happening any time soon, so I’m stuck reminiscing about the good old days. On the bright side, walking down memory lane from time to time is fun too.

Southside Protector: Chapter 8

Daniel headbutted Kennedy again. When he felt her go slack, he punched her a couple of times to ensure that she was out. Convinced that she wasn’t playing possum, he flipped her onto her stomach, pulled her hands behind her back, and reached for his restraints. That’s when he remembered that he didn’t bring them. The plan was for them to fight the dragon. Human restraints do nothing for that so they left them behind.

The roar of the dragon brought his focus back to the problem at hand. He didn’t have the time to think of an improvised solution, but the only way to be positive that Kennedy wouldn’t give them any more trouble was to kill her. As mad as he was at her for siding with the dragon, he wasn’t ready to go that far. That feeling might change if he discovered that she had indeed killed Nikki. If he found that Nikki was dead, he wouldn’t hesitate to dish out Kennedy’s punishment; the death penalty.

Daniel picked her up and dragged her over to the armored vehicle. She groaned right before he slammed her head against the metal plates three times. On a normal person, that action would have crushed their skull. On a person infused with the Protector serum, he was afraid it wasn’t enough to keep her out of the rest of the fight. It would have to do for the moment.

He looked back to see what had happened behind him while he was dealing with Kennedy. Robbie and Emmeline were still keeping the dragon occupied, though the dragon had dropped to the ground from the top of the parking and appeared to be more angry than usual. Then, he saw why. The RPG had blasted the tip of its tail off. That made him smile. That’s when the question became whether he should go after the RPG launcher or check on Nikki.