This blog is a continuous work in progress, fluidly charting my diverse interests and reflecting the far reaching range of my tastes. Frequent subjects of discussion include literature, sports, politics, pop culture and artistic motivation. You will find thoughtful essays and stream of consciousness rants, reviews of books written by others and the presentation of my own fiction - novel excerpts as well as short stories. What it is today may not be the case tomorrow. Welcome to A Line A Day.
Coloring pages based on the Ava Appelsawse Adventures will be emailed to anyone who requests them before December 25, 2020. To do so, simply save a screen grab of your proof of book purchase at Amazon and email it to MUDHouseBooks@gmailcom. In return, a PDF for the set of free coloring pages will be emailed to you.
Bonus #2, Kindle edition of MATTERS OF CONVENIENCE is available for FREE on 11/15 & 11/16
Way back in 2011 I wrote a post here entitled WHY I WRITE WHAT I WRITE. In that post I mentioned that "When I'm done editing my second novel I plan to move on to a series of kid books".
Time flies at an incredibly rapid rate, unlike the pace in which I write and edit. So even though my debut children's book was already in mind nine years ago, there was much work to be done before I could get to it that eventually ended up as the publication of Matters of Convenience. While my second novel was prominent on the front burner, Ava Appelsawse sat patiently on the back one. By 2017 I was able to move it up to primary area of focus and get the writing done. I alerted the world via this blog post that the first book in the series was written, I had gotten started on the second, and my wife had embarked on creating illustrations for Ava Appelsawse #1.
This is not the first collaborative artistic endeavor between Erin and I (she had created book covers for me in the past, and we even recorded a reading for an audio version of one of my short stories when we were dating), but it was definitely the most time and labor intensive project for her. We decided from the start that not only would Ava Appelsawse feature her illustration work, but we wanted to present it in full color because COLOR is what she does best.
And so here we now are in 2020, a year for the record books that has been tumultuous and challenging to say the least. The Coronavirus pandemic has significantly altered our lifestyles and forced us to discover new ways of being productive in our pursuits of success and happiness. Since writing is pandemic-proof, I have gotten started on my third novel. I also decided to take a shot at being a booktuber. On a sort of regular basis you can find reviews of books I have read at Roy's Book Reviews. And in addition to those videos, you'll also find ones where I read aloud children's books from my daughter's library while thumbing through the pages for your viewing pleasure.
As for Erin, she was able to make time in her busy schedule as an illustrator/fine artist/art teacher/mother to illustrate our very first children's book publication from front cover to back and the pages in between. The moment is now soon approaching for the debut of The Absolutely Amazing Adventures of Ava Appelsawse. Our scheduled publication date (exclusively at Amazon, at least for starters) is November, 15 2020. I can't wait for people to finally read it and share what they thought. I hope that grown folk like it, but this story is meant for young readers and those being read to by parents and other caregivers.
More than 93% of BLM demonstrations have been peaceful, yet 42% of population believe that protestors are trying to incite violence or destroy property. "Research indicates that this disparity stems from political orientation and biased media framing"https://t.co/wsZWqwRf37
Weird story of the day: Jessica Krug, a white woman from Kansas, has been pretending to be Black for her entire professional career, and now she’s apologizing for it:
She has tenure for doing Black studies work at George Washington U. She once had the audacity to call *me* a fraud. And bc of her, others will be suspicious of folks who look like me. And of Black studies. And ppl who vouched for her. 💩https://t.co/8aLwP6r4un
— Justice4AnthonyMcClain Prescod-Weinstein 🙅🏽♀️ (@IBJIYONGI) September 3, 2020
The fact that she had no less than THREE separate fake black identities & one of them was "Caribbean rooted Bronx Blackness" [aka my ID] is just priceless. "African American history professor admits she lied by saying she was Black for years" https://t.co/bdxFOGoJNI
NEWS: In March, Joe Prude called the police for help. His brother, Daniel, was acting strangely. Instead, video shows Rochester police handcuffing him, mocking him, and kneeling on his back while pushing his face into the ground until he stops breathing. https://t.co/VHerJ27Di7
Defund the police simply means take some of the money that's going to stuff like armored tanks and arming cops as if they're about to go up against Al-Qaeda teamed up with Rambo, reallocate it to trained mental health professionals who know not to shoot first and ask ?s later. https://t.co/L4NoZkbJyo
There are protesters who march over issues like cops killing people for no good reason. & then there are folks who go to a rally, hardly any of them wearing masks, not only to celebrate motorcycle lifestyle but also to protest being asked to wear masks, keep social distance, etc. https://t.co/GoSHyJTVAK
Can he actually be as horrible as articles like this make him out to be? I keep thinking that my opinion of him can't get any lower and then something like this comes to my attention and I just can't... https://t.co/kLvdCuyn5k
You declare Colin Kaepernick to be a horrible person because you interpreted his actions as being anti-military (even though he full explained what his actions were about and they had nothing to do with our military) but worship Trump who ducked service & disparaged soldiers. https://t.co/5GWjiBB07b
Here's the transcript of Trump likening police officers who shoot civilians in the back to golfers who miss clutch putts...and Fox's Laura Ingraham trying to interject to save him from himself: pic.twitter.com/pay00wYLw3
A) Terrible metaphor esp. with "I can't breathe" murders. B) We know if snap decision about using deadly force is needed, cop errs on side of getting home safe even if it means killing someone. c) Protests are not over snap decisions but deliberate unnecessary killings by cops. https://t.co/weCMNQ9T4U
BREAKING: Pence says he “doesn’t recall” if he was told to take over when Trump made his emergency visit to Walter Reed. Which absolutely confirms the story. Trump is unwell and completely unfit for office. #TrumpCancelsFootball
BREAKING: The Trump administration just rolled back protections in the Fair Housing Act that are crucial to combating housing discrimination against marginalized communities.
We're committed to fighting this rule and ensuring equal housing opportunities for all.
I'm pleased to see "Vontae Mack" trending, because yeah, I get it that Chadwick played Jackie Robinson & Thurgood Marshall & James Brown and of course...Black Panther. But what we're not gonna do is sleep on Vontae Mack and Draft Day. https://t.co/TqJj0fh5rt
The suspect in the fatal shooting of two people during a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a former member of a youth police cadet program with an affinity for guns, according to police and online profiles. https://t.co/gVXP4CjoGV
It's fascinating how Trump is running against what's happening on his own watch, much of it that he is either responsible for or else made worse by ineptitude of response. Somehow he thinks he can scare people from Biden by pretending Joe's the incumbent & he's the outsider. https://t.co/6lkPHxFtPL
An endorsement by a bin Laden hours after verified reports of how poorly Trump thinks of our troops is a fascinating week of public relations. Then again, Hillary used email, Obama is a nosybody, and Joe Biden closed his eyes in prayer. So it's a wash.
BREAKING: Several boats have sunk during a boat parade in support of @realDonaldTrump on Lake Travis, @TravisCoSheriff confirms. Crews have responded to many boats in “distress.” @KVUE
There is a Pro Trump boat parade disaster happening right now. The wakes from the big rich boats are flooding and sinking the small poor boats and if thats not the most accurate shit idk what is.
Given the political reality the nation is facing, Anita Hill is not only going to vote for Biden -- she's also willing to work with him, should he become president. https://t.co/j1uNVLirPx
Science. That's one of the classes they made us take throughout our school years, right? Because it's supposed to generally matter, right? https://t.co/FKDXUHnzCs
NEW: In upcoming book, Michael Cohen writes Donald Trump's disdain for Obama was so extreme he hired a "Faux-Bama" to participate in a video in which he "ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him." He includes this photo: https://t.co/LGrqsUUrY2pic.twitter.com/otwYW8VSmQ
BREAKING: World No. 1 Novak Djokovic has been DEFAULTED from the #USOpen, during the first set of his match against Pablo Carreno Busta, after a ball he hit toward the baseline struck a linesperson. pic.twitter.com/E8JnOJ3kgK
I'm not a big fan of telling artists "this is what you need to do or not do to be considered worthy of the prizes we dish out". If critics/audience/award givers dictate the shape that art takes, it's no longer art. It's color by numbers.
You've seen the phrase, you know what it means. Every week someone previously beloved is declared to be no longer worthy of our affection. Or every other day on rare slow weeks when Trump has not said/done anything especially idiotic to occupy our outrage (or defense mechanisms for anyone reading this who happens to be Team MAGA, but chances are that I'vesufficiently alienated Trump fans with previous posts). On Twitter I typically need to scroll through a score of uninformative tweets until finally finding one that reveals what it is that a celebrity is being cancelled for. Not that these cancellations are unanimous of course. Sprinkled in with the condemnations are usually statements in defense of the famous person who has been put on cyber trial for some crime du jour. Depending on the seriousness of the matter at hand, being cancelled by the citizens of social media can have major real life repercussions. Jobs and/or endorsements are lost. Celebrities are demoted from B list to D list. Highly anticipated movie or album releases end up as flops. All because someone who was given the wonderful opportunity to say nothing at all on a subject and remain revered, instead chose to open their mouths and insert feet.
I've written here in the past about some noteworthy cancellations back when they didn't come at quite so fast and furious a pace. There was the time John Mayer said something real dumb, for example. Since then I've decided that Mayer is a genuine talent whose music I enjoy. Since I'm usually able to separate art from artist, I didn't proceed to remove John from my Spotify list of music listened to when I'm in the mood for something mellow. Another example is when Don Imus (who I wasn't a fan of and didn't grow to become one) insulted members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team. His career never recovered. Since then he has passed away. I won't dance on the man's grave. I think John Mayer was basically trying to be too clever for his own good and probably has some redeeming qualities to go along with his arrogance, but Imus isn't someone whose particular brand of hate I will miss.
If I tried to write a blog post about every one who did something to earn cancellation in 2020 I would have little time left over for anything else. There is a whole new category of celebrity now courtesy of YouTube and TikTok channels that have earned certain individuals millions of followers...and dollars. That means a whole bunch of new people who can do something on any given day to move from the internet's Nice List to the Naughty List. Many of these people I've never even heard of until the day they do something to get themselves cancelled. So rather than writing at length about each instance, I observe the blur of fumbling humanity and do my best to keep up...or to ignore. Depends on my mood. Once upon a time I proclaimed that the bar to be considered a celebrity had been lowered too much. Since then the bar has been discarded altogether and I no longer bother to complain about it.
As I see it there are two categories of behavior that get celebrities cancelled, and they are not on equal footing. The first category is saying something that fails the political correctness test, expression of opinion that insults or expresses intolerance towards a particular group of people. The second category is reprehensible action. Apologies may be expressed in both cases (some done so insincerely that a person earns an extra cancellation for their apology over what warranted the first one) but I'm far less likely to forgive somebody for doing something terrible than for saying something that ruffles my feathers. Words and Deeds do not each carry quite the same amount of weight on my scale. Mayer and Imus are examples of the first cancel category. In recent days J.K. Rowling has entered it. I have no idea what effect this will have on her book sales. But since she has already sold enough copies to become a billionaire, if she fails to sell any more Harry Potter tales her tax bracket is probably set in stone at this point.
Examples of people who ALLEGEDLY fall into the second category include Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen, Chris Brown, and R. Kelly. For them, my rule about separating the art from the artist still applies. I cannot claim to have done a 100% boycott of any of these men regardless of the degree to which I believe they are guilty as hell. Does that mean I haven't actually cancelled them along with the rest of the internet? Does lack of true cancellation imply endorsement? Is endorsement enabling? I don't believe so, though I suppose it is a slippery slope. To cancel or not to cancel, that is the question. Does the answer even matter for those who somehow are cancel-proof? I'm certainly not the only one who still listens to music by R. Kelly or Chris Brown or Michael Jackson or a ton of other artists who ALLEGEDLY failed at some point to be upstanding citizens. I'm pretty sure people are still watching Woody Allen movies. Syndicated episodes of The Cosby Show were taken off the airwaves for a while (which punished a bunch of other actors from the show who did nothing wrong) but I believe it has since returned. Trump isn't the only one who improbably manages to weather every self conjured storm. Hell, O.J. Simpson joined Twitter well after being condemned by society and last time I checked (which was right before typing this sentence) he had over 942,000 followers on Twitter. Can someone with such an "achievement" legitimately be described as cancelled? Effective cancellation of superior athletes has been especially difficult for us to manage. Is this because we have such strong admiration for those with abilities that make them seem closer in nature to Superman than to the mundanity and erasability of Clark Kent? We may appreciate dispensing justice with juried verdicts of incarceration, but so too do we love a good rehabilitation and redemption story. DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK. Perhaps it's not just those we deeply love who can't be cancelled, but also those we really hate. Maybe the line between these two emotions is even thinner than we thought.
True stars remain celestial well after their shine has largely diminished. But that doesn't mean our cancel privileges are entirely powerless. I'm confident that we can permanently get some of these big shot YouTubers up out of here when they mess up, because (please read the conclusion of this post to the beat of a Janet Jackson song) We Are A Part Of The Cancel Nation.
NOW ACCEPTING REVIEW REQUESTS FROM INDIE AUTHORS ---
I plan to review independently published novels (with perhaps a sprinkle of non fiction thrown in) on a regular basis when the calendar turns to 2017. No genres barred, which is not to say that I will read anything/everything suggested to me. I may take a pass on most for I intend to be picky, my selection criteria based strictly on what sounds like "my kind of book". DIVERSITY welcomed, PRINT preferred. In addition to a synopsis I'll want to see a brief excerpt from your book to help me decide. For a taste of my style, type "book reviews" into the Search bar. Or you can peruse my collection of reviews at goodreads. Send queries to mudhousebooks@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------
Roy Pickering is the author of the novels Matters of Convenience & Patches of Grey, as well as the novella Feeding the Squirrels which you can find presented here in serialized form. A sampling of his prose is showcased at RoyPickering.net. Roy once blogged here in tandem with his wife. Erin's presence is still felt through her artwork in many of the postings.
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