WELL HELLO EVERYONE.

I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE WILDS OF THE TECHPOCALYPSE.

Here’s what happened:

I got the one-two punch of:

a) my website stopped loading for me (still for you, just not for me)

b) my computer started to, in slow-motion, shit the bed — it would slow down and freeze and be wildly inconsistent. It was like watching someone choke on a hoagie through frosted glass.

SUPER ANNOYING.

(Less annoying but considerably weirder — Sam Sykes and I did that slasher thing last week, and it went cuckoo viral, and now I think we were made the Lord Regents of Twitter or something, so that happened.)

So, it took me many moons to get both of these tech problems sorted in good order, but sorted they are. I have a new computer (basically the same computer, an iMac that’s just four years newer) and turns out my web host was blocking my IP ha ha ha what fun.

We will once again try to return to some semblance of normalcy.

In other news:

I hit 100,000 words on the current manuscript (Exeunt), and I did that in two months (!), and I think this book still has another 100,000 words to go (?!), so wish me a big screaming bushel of fucking luck. Also the book probably sucks, but that’s why Jesus invented “second drafts.”

OH AND HEY LOOK WHAT’S OUT TODAY:

It’s got dinosaurs! And fascism! And fascist dinosaurs! And a guy who will shoot arrows into fascist dinosaurs!

It’s out where comics are sold.

Including Comixology.

I hope you check it out.

Tomorrow, keep your grapes peeled for a couple guest posts, and then next week we will ideally resume normal service at These Here Bloggerypages.

In the meantime, here have a pretty picture of a dragonfly I took.

So, given this interaction and also the release of Riley Sager’s FINAL GIRLS, I figure today’s flash fiction challenge would be cool if it played with the slasher movie story type — so, write a story that has something to do in some way with a slasher film narrative. (Think, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, so on, so forth.) It can be a horror story or not — feel free to play with this story type in the context of other genres. It also doesn’t need to be a slasher story itself if you don’t want — it just needs to use the idea in some way. (Maybe the characters totally love slasher movies, f’rex.)

Sharpen the knife. Have fun.

Length: ~1500 words

Due by: August 4th, Friday, noon EST

As I have noted in the past, Twitter is great for me as an author less because it connects me to my audience and sells books (which it does!) and more because it lets me hangout digitally, by-proxy, with a bunch of other penmonkeys doing their penmonkey thing. Sometimes those authors talk. Sometimes Sam Sykes is involved.

This is one of those times.

[law and order noise, CHUNG CHUNG]

I advise you to click here:

INSPIROBOT.

There, you will find the ability to generate algorithmic inspirational memes.

Just like the one at the fore of this post.

You can either:

a) generate your own or

b) use the one above.

From there, design a piece of short fiction around that, um, “inspiration.”

Use the text in the story if possible.

Otherwise, just use it as a springboard to delightful story weirdness.

Length: ~1000 words

Due by: Friday, the 28th, noon EST

Post at your online space.

Link back here so we can all read it.

The end.

Being the hip, trendy tastemaker that I am, I have now joined the brand new social media network for Cool, Rad World Wide Web Users — it’s this thing called Instagram.

Have you heard of it?

WELL, I’M OVER THERE NOW, PAVING THE WAY.

Yeah, no, I know, I’m way behind.

There existed a technological shift in the last five years inside my brain where at one point I cared to stay on top of this stuff and then I suddenly cared less about staying on top of this stuff. I still don’t know what the fuck Snapchat is or does or if it’s just a rotating carousel of dick pics that erase themselves. I haven’t joined all your fancy Circlespaces and Tickleclicks and Humprs and Fudholes and Beerfaces and other social media networks that allow you to automatically share your blood pressure numbers or the contents of your medicine cabinets or various arty photos of your nipples. I’m sure I’ll catch up in the next 20, 30 years.

But I now have joined Instagram.

I am to understand pictures over there are called “IGGS,” as in, “EGGS,” but Instagram photos. IG photos. IGGS. I’m sure this is true and if it’s not true it will be true now, as I have said it, and clearly I am a paragon, a voyager, a true tastemaker and universal lingo designer.

Go follow me there.

Or don’t, I dunno, I posted one picture, relax.

Healthcare and healthcare coverage is an important topic for me for two reasons.

1.) Because my father died without coverage. He went without coverage because he had a pre-existing condition, and he was in the gap between his actual retirement and the proper retirement age, so he went without coverage for a short time until he could pick up Medicare at 65. In that time he got prostate cancer, as he went without any kind of preventative checks. It metastasized. It killed him. And that was that.

2.) Because the ACA has been a boon for me as a writer — which is to say, as a small business, because that’s what I am. I went to get health insurance initially and it was very expensive to cover my family, and it did not cover a great deal… and that was before we even got into any tussle over pre-existing conditions. The institution of the ACA was fortuitous, and allowed us to instead go to the marketplace, where we got health insurance that was considerably cheaper and covered considerably more. It allowed me to embark upon the “novelist” phase of my career in a real way. Like my books? They exist, in part, because of the ACA.

So, with those two previously-mentioned caveats mentioned once more —

Hey, how’s the healthcare debate going in this country?

Good? Yeah?

*checks watch*

*stares off at a pile of medical waste on fire*

*someone adds a pile of diapers to the conflagration*

Oh, so that good, huh?

*clears throat*

So, last night, in case you missed it, the healthcare repeal and replace failed in the Senate because it did not accrue enough support — those who bailed on it (Senators Moran and Lee) suggested they wanted an open legislative process, and some even suggested a bipartisan look at healthcare going forward (gasp, what, you mean you’d like to, to, to cooperate whoa holy shit what a revolution). And then ol’ Turtle Waddle, ol Mr. Turkey Dildo, ol’ Senator Mitch McConnell, he said, OH HELL NO, and he released a statement that said they will now pursue a repeal of the ACA without a current replacement.

In case you are unsure what that looks like, imagine that it looks like a person holding a sewing machine swaddled in fabric, and then that person leaps excitedly out of a plane in the hopes of stitching together a proper parachute before turning into a pancake of blood-and-bone.

Then, this morning, our melting shit-scented candle of a president endorsed an even uglier version of this idea, saying, and I quote, “As I have always said, let Obamacare fail and then come together and do a great healthcare plan. Stay tuned!”

Stay tuned.

Like this is a reality show and not:

a) a massive industry on which our economy hangs

b) people’s lives.

This is our, ahem, “leader” —

Someone who is content to let a thing fail instead of leading the way. Instead of fixing or repairing. Can you imagine seeing a bridge that’s failing and saying, “I’ll let it fail, then replace it.” Worse, it’s like he’s ready to commit some grand guignol of insurance fraud — “As I have always said, let the house burn down, or maybe I’ll burn it down myself, then I’ll collect the insurance and we can come together and pay for a great big new house. Stay tuned!”

He will let the system fail.

He will let people die.

And then he’ll swoop in and we’ll do “great” healthcare.

What a pal, what a chum.

Anyway, back to the Senate.

The Senate passed a repeal-without-replace in 2015, and that succeeded — in part, I suspect, because it was purely performative. They knew Obama wasn’t going to sign it, because c’mon. Obama wasn’t going to undo part of his legacy. But they showed solidarity. They passed it, he vetoed it. It gets more complicated now because what McConnell is proposing is that they excise the ACA over two years, giving them a window of replacement.

But I want you to pay attention —

They last tried to repeal in 2015.

It is now 2017.

That was two years ago.

They still have no replacement.

That wasn’t the beginning, though —  they’ve been trying to undo the ACA for SEVEN years.

And still, no replacement.

They now control the executive and the legislative branches of government.

And still, no viable replacement.

So, to assume that in two years they will come up with a capable healthcare system in place is not only absurd, it is statistically unlikely. (Never mind the fact that the CBO score on “repeal-without-replace” is the most devastating of all in terms of costs and people thrown off healthcare.) The GOP have nothing. They don’t have the chops. They’ve had seven years, then two, then they gained control of everything, and we’re still with the ACA.

Which, by the way, is a good thing.

Yes, the ACA is imperfect, but guess what? It’s fixable. (It in part was hamstrung by Rubio, who eliminated high-risk corridors.) Listen, as a parent with a kid, I gotta tell you — it’s an epic fucking blessing when you learn a thing is broken-but-fixable. It saves you money to fix the things that you can fix rather than replacing them. (That, one could argue, is a truly conservative mindset. Conserve what you have, fix what can be fixed.) Furthermore, it is galling to know we have leaders who are willing to play chicken with people’s actual lives and an entire industry in order to pursue a dogged crusade against what is, very honestly, a Republican-based plan (yes, the ACA was originally a Republican plan) that happened to be implemented by a black Democrat.

So, as always, I urge you:

Call your senators.

Thanks.