The number one position

It finally happened. Outpost Epsilon is at number one at Fictionwise. Orola moved into number four position. All of my other books also moved ahead a bit.

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b90231/Outpost-Epsilon/Herbert-Grosshans/?si=0

More news from Fictionwise

Good news. Outpost Epsilon made it to number 2 position in sales yesterday and Orola is at number 5. Maybe, just maybe...dare I hope?...one of them will make it to number one position. I haven't had a best seller for a while.
On other notes, I am at 71,000 words right now with 'The Mindgod'. I'm writing every chance I get, which is usually in the evening. We hardly watch TV in the summer. During the day I'm busy with my yard. The garden and other stuff. I've made some progress with my patio. I've put down 12 patio blocks. Only 122 more to go... Preparing the 'bed' is the hardest job. All that gravel I have to remove and distribute on the driveway. With a shovel and a wheelbarrow. And a bad back. In addition, the patio blocks are heavy too. But it will look nice when it's all done.

News from Fictionwise

'Orola, Warrior Priestess' and 'Outpost Epsilon' are available now from Fiction Wise. Just click on the titles and it'll get you there. They are in the last positions for sales (naturally, they've just been added). We'll see how fast they move up in sales. A little Holiday Romance is at position 5, Beyond the Stars at position 6, and Dual Visions at position 11. My other books have slipped. Maybe Orola and Epsilon will bring those sales up also.

More about the President and the Fly

Wow. I posted my article about Obama swatting a fly at ‘Allvoices’. I’ve had already over 880 views and some comments. Amazing how much buzz a tiny incident like that can cause. Check it out here: Allvoices.
It is the same article I have below. I changed a couple of things to make it more presentable.

The Fly

US President Obama killed a fly. Nothing unusual. We’ve all done that at one time or another. Except for the Peta people. They practice a catch-and-release program with insects. Give me a break! According to them ‘Flies have feelings too’. Maybe they do, but they are a damn nuisance, and there are way too many of them.
I sometimes wonder about people like that. Where do they live? Under some protective dome on a planet called “Moron’?
Do they know that flies carry all kinds of diseases? Do they have any idea where the fly that manages to land on your sandwich has been before? How about mosquitoes or ticks? Anyone who lives in the real world and has experienced them will gladly help them into insect heaven or wherever they end up if there is an afterlife.
Mosquitoes carry the West Nile Virus and ticks can give you Lyme disease. My cousin was bitten by one of those mosquitoes. He spent time in the hospital, couldn’t remember his own name and spent months trying to walk again. My son was luckier, he only had the lesser symptoms. Let those Peta people get bitten by one of these critters and they may change their tune.
I love animals and I don’t believe in senseless killing of animals, but there are limits. I feed birds all year round. I have birdhouses in the yard for them to live in. If I catch a spider in the house I carry it outside and let it go, but most of the time if an insect enters my home it is considered an intruder into my sanctuary and it will be dealt with harshly. The sentence for break and enter is DEATH. Last year I caught and eliminated 17 mice in my garage. I’ll be on the lookout again this year. The traps and the cheese are waiting.
Live and let live is a wonderful concept, but we are living on a hostile planet. We’ve been at war with the sauna and fauna, with the viruses and bacteria ever since Homo Sapiens appeared, and before. There are carnivores, omnivores, herbivores and who knows what else on this planet. One eats the other. That’s how it was designed.
The majority of animal rights activists are living in a dream world. They are fanatics causing trouble, just like most of the minority groups who will do anything to call attention to their cause. Maybe their ideas are noble but as usual they carry it to the extremes, like the terrorist who blow up themselves and others for what they believe in. Or like antiabortionists who find nothing wrong murdering a doctor who performs abortions. (I’m not saying I am for abortion, but that is another topic).
Let’s get real here, peoples. Catching and releasing a fly borders on insanity. A person who does that should have his/her head examined and brought back to reality. All I can say is: Get a life.

Hello Visitors

As promised in my posting, I will send you a free story if you send me an email to hegro@shaw.ca

Another month gone

I’m finally finished with my garden. This year I am at least a week behind because of the cold weather. We had frost on Friday 29th of May and had to cover up the tomato and pepper plants. They survived. Today I spread fertilizer on the grass and as luck wants it, it started raining after I finished. Tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain, I’m going to spread some pesticides. The dandelions, as beautiful as the yellow flowers are, they are not a welcome sight on the lawn. And I have plenty of them. That means drastic measures need to be taken. In addition to dandelions there are other weeds growing.
My publisher MSFiction re-released my ‘Seeds of Chaos’ series with new covers. Check them out on my Website ‘Herbert’s World’.
I also did a minor change on the welcome page of my website. I added a picture that I drew a long time ago. I think it adds a bit of a fantasy setting to my site. I felt the welcome page needed something to make it less boring and more personal.
Some of my books are now available on Amazon.

Where is Spring?

This weather is just not getting any better. Where the heck is Spring? Summer is just around the corner and we still have frost at night. I’ve bought all of my plants and seeds and I’m ready to seed and plant my garden. My plants are standing in the garage, waiting and wondering what is going on.
I saw a hummingbird yesterday feeding from our feeder and today I watched an Oriole clinging to the feeder and dipping its beak into the yellow plastic flowers for some sugar water. Poor thing. It tired itself out by hanging on and pretending to be a hummingbird. Once in a while, it nearly fell to the floor from exhaustion and rested on the ground to try again a few minutes later. I’ve never seen that before. I wonder if it is common that Orioles feed from hummingbird feeders. They sure are beautiful birds.
The Juncos are gone now. They hang around only for a short time. We have plenty of sparrows, all different kind. I see a lot of Harris Sparrows; they have black heads and throats, with yellowish bills, and are fairly large. Then there are the White-Crowned Sparrows with their white strips running from the back of their head to the front. Some have three stripes, some only one. Some of them are probably White-throated Sparrows. There are also the Chipping Sparrows with their red heads. Of course, there are others that I can’t identify. I’m not really a bird specialist.
We’ve had a few American Finches on our Finch Feeder. Once they are here, they stay, but they do most of their feeding in the fall before they go back south. That’s when we get large numbers of them. Most of them are the young ones, they are quite small and need to fatten up before they leave.
A few Black Birds and Blue Jays also show up to scare the smaller birds away. They are a bit messy but they are beautiful birds. I don’t chase them away. We’ve also had a few Common Redpolls passing through on their way up north where they breed in the summer. I believe I saw a straggler yesterday, unless it was a Red Finch.
I started planting an apple tree but had to give up because it began to rain. And that after the weather people said this morning no precipitation today. Well, we all know how dependable those forecasts are. Luckily, it didn’t rain too much and I shall carry on tomorrow. Actually, I have two apple trees to plant. I did manage to plant a Pyramidical Cedar though. The one we had in front of our fireplace didn’t make it through the winter. I’ll never buy another Cedar from Home Depot again. Or Walmart. Those Cedars are grown south of the border, in the USA, and not hardy enough for our climate. This was the second one that didn’t make it. That means I lost two years of growth. The one I bought cost me $50.00 instead of $20.00, but it was grown in Manitoba and I have a five-year warranty on it. We’ll see. Cedars are finicky. Many of my neighbors planted large numbers of them around their properties and most of them turned brown and died. I never asked where they bought them, but I’d bet not at the local garden center. I’m not trying to run down Home Depot and Walmart. They are good stores and I buy there. In fact, when I was in business, I bought most of my materials at Home Depot, but there are just some things you have to buy at the right places.
The only good thing about rain is that I get a bit of time to do some writing. I’m over 51,000 words now with my ‘Mindgod’ novel. There is more to come.

Surprise, Surprise

Somebody screwed up. When I woke up this morning and looked out of the window I saw something that shouldn’t be there. Snow. Not on May 9. As a writer with a fertile imagination I immediately thought that I might have slipped into another dimension or possibly traveled back in time. Whoopee, I am young again. Then I looked in the mirror and still thought ‘time travel’. Only I traveled in the wrong direction: into the future. The image I saw in the mirror was that of an old guy in need of a haircut and a shave. Then reality set in. That old guy was me and I was still in the present. Damn!
Well, I guess I’ll have to beg my wife to give me a haircut. That always shaves ten years off my looks. Unfortunately not my age. Yes, that’s right, my wife cuts my hair. No, she is not a barber or hairdresser, but she has a talent for it. She used to cut our kids’ hair and one day she cut mine. I liked it and after that she did it all the time. There are advantages to that. I don’t have to take time off to go to the barber and sit and wait for my turn. I don’t have to pay and best of all, no tips. Well, that’s not true either. I help her with the dishes and with making the bed. And I go shopping with her. Although, she complains that we always buy too much when I’m with her and it takes too long, but she doesn’t mind when I carry the grocery bags.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and the weather people promised warmer weather. Let’s hope they are right for a change. Yesterday, I bought some seeds for my garden. I’ve already tilled it under and I’m ready for seeding and planting. Usually, I plant my garden in the last week of May or right after the long weekend. The way things are progressing it may not happen this year. There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing your plants die because they were hit by frost. Even the seeds won’t sprout if the soil doesn’t warm up.
I put out the Finch feeder and the Hummingbird feeder because somebody told me they saw their first Hummingbird in their yard. Poor bird. There are no flowers blooming yet.
The birds are slowly coming back from the South. On Thursday I saw seven Pelicans circling over our property. I talked to a friend this morning and he said that he has a pair of Mallards nesting on his pond and also a pair of Wood ducks in the nesting box near his house. Maybe Summer is just around the corner.
Happy Mother’s Day.

Nothing political

Did my periodic check of my sales on Fiction Wise today. Here is the list of my book sales:

Stardogs 2 in position number 6
Cliffs of Time in number 7
Seeds of Chaos 2 in number 9
Stardogs 2 in number 12
Orion, the Hunt in number 23
Daughter of the Dark in number 27
Mother of Light in number 28
Goddess of Life in number 30
Seeds of Chaos 1 in number 31
Dual Visions in number 34
Men of Eros (Digest) in number 42
Midnight Raunch (Digest) in number 52
Beyond the Stars (Digest) in number 66

As you can see from 34 books 10 of them are mine. That is nearly 30 % of all the books published by MSFiction and sold on Fiction Wise. I have to admit that is impressive. If only the numbers were there to make it really special, but it still makes me feel good.

I’ve been busy with writing ‘The Mindgod’. So far, I’ve written 40,000 words. Most of the novel I copied (and translated where necessary) from my scribbler. I also edited it and re-wrote some at the same time. Now I’ve come to the end of what I’ve written, and from now on I’ll be working from scribbled outlines and vague ideas. That means it will go a bit slower. It’s been years since I wrote it (over twenty!) and, of course, I don’t remember exactly where I was actually going with the story (If I even had it mapped out in my head at that time). I wrote an ending for it but I’m not sure if I’m going to use it. We’ll see.

Right now, there is so much work in the yard and that keeps me from writing, but the work needs to be done. We’ve raked and cut the grass, collected and burned the fallen willow branches. It was a huge pile. I’ve tilled my garden once. Now I want to put in some fertilizer. In the past I’ve used Alfalfa pellets. They are actually rabbit food but Alfalfa is a good fertilizer. Last year, in the fall, I tilled a lot of leaves into the garden. They should help to make the soil fertile.

I also bought a couple ‘Goodland’ Apple trees. They need to be planted. The one I planted two years ago, died and my one good producer, a ‘Parkland’ Apple tree, didn’t have any apples at all last year. I hope it isn’t giving up now, I need that tree.

Today is quite cold (4 Celsius) and it is drizzling off and on. Not a nice day. It better warm up because I usually plant my garden in the last week of May when we shouldn’t get any more frost, but here are never any guarantees.

In case I don’t get a chance to post something until Sunday, have a Happy Mother’s Day.

S-Words

Smart, Stupid and Stubborn. They all start with the letter S. In fact, Stupid and Stubborn have the same first three letters. That’s quite a bond. Well, sometimes it is Smart to be Stubborn and Smart to take a Stand, but sometimes it is outright Stupid. I’m talking about Chrysler and its employees. Chrysler is on the verge of bankruptcy. Extreme measures have to be taken to Save the company and thousands of jobs. This is not the time to play tough, concessions need to be made. But of course, the Unions with their own agenda won’t listen to reason.
Electricians, Plumbers, and other construction workers earn about $30.00 an hour in Manitoba. Those are considered top wages. These tradesmen (I refuse to use the word ’Tradesperson’ or ‘Journeyperson’. It sounds so Stupid) work in all kinds of weather conditions. Much of the time outside. They have to go through years of apprenticeship training and go to school to get their papers before they can earn these wages.
Now, $60.00 an hour (that is after the drop of $19.00 Chrysler and the government propose) is not such a bad wage. I’m sure there are many unemployed workers who would gladly work for that. I’d bet that even a lot of employed workers would jump at the chance to work for that kind of money.
We are in a deep recession and being reasonable only makes common Sense.
I know what it means to make concessions. In the late eighties and early nineties, I experienced economic difficulties and had to adjust my prices down. Way down. Was I happy? Of course not, but it was a matter of Survival. Swim or Sink. I chose Swimming, barely Staying above water and I Survived the crisis. Nobody worried about me then.
I won’t feel Sympathetic either when Chrysler goes bankrupt because its employees (and Union) refuse to be Smart. Those unemployed autoworkers won’t find another $79.00 or even $60.00 an hour job. They’ll be lucky and happy to find work that pays minimum wage.
Somali Pirates is another S-word. Our Canadian government sent a helicopter and a Destroyer into the region plagued by pirates. Yesterday, they chased a pirate boat for Seven hours to finally catch and disarm Seven pirates only to let them go again so they can hijack another ship and take more hostages. Wow! Two S-words immediately pop into my mind: Stupid and Suckers. Those pirates must be laughing their heads off, while every other country groans. Any respect we had went out of the window. How many dollars did that useless little maneuver cost the Canadian Taxpayer?
But why are we Surprised? We let known terrorists into our country. When we catch them, we don’t send them back to their own country because they might be prosecuted there. We even pay them millions of dollars compensation when they have the audacity to sue us.
In days gone by, they used to hang pirates from the gallows. After all, they are nothing but common criminals. But, then again, we treat criminals with kid’s gloves. We call them misguided, troubled Souls.
Sorry about that but it needed to be Said.

Signs of Spring

Spring is here for sure. I counted over 50 Robins in our yard today. And a whole bunch more in the neighboring properties. They were digging in the grass, sitting in the trees and singing their beautiful songs. They won’t be around for a long time, probably just passing through. I also saw two red-winged blackbirds and one woodpecker. In addition to the many sparrows and juncos (another type of sparrow). A couple of blue jays also made their usual appearance by our bird feeders.

Took a walk down to the Red River. The water is still high and moving quickly. We’re expecting another crest in a few days. It wasn’t exactly warm today, only 5 degrees Celsius. Next week they promised us warmer weather.

Looking forward to working in the yard again…cough…cough…

FictionWise Stats

Periodically I check my sales on FictionWise. I did yesterday and found that 9 of my 13 books available on FictionWise are in the top 27 in sales, that means 1/3 of the 27 books sold on that date are mine. 'Cliffs of Time' is at number 3 position, 'Orion, the Hunt' at number 7. In fact, Orion is my bestselling book so far. Pretty impressive I’d say. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean that my books are selling hundreds or even thousands of copies (sigh!). When it comes to being profitable these sales mean little since I get only pennies for each book sold, but I’ve whined about that before. They are good for my ego and that’s all, but I’m still happy.
I had an interview with Whohub. If you are interested in reading it here is the link: whohub.com/hegro
I’ve been able to do a bit more writing. I put aside ‘Epsilon’ and Book 4 of ‘The Xandra’ and started a novel, which I wrote years, and years ago. I never finished it and I’m determined to finish it now. So far, I’m up to 20,000 words. Part of the novel is written in German (yes, that’s how long ago I started writing it!), which means I have to translate it into English. The novel is titled ‘The Mindgod’, but that may not be the title when I’m finished with it. I had a dream last night where an old man asked me if I was still writing. When I answered ‘Yes’ he said, “That’s good. You always finish what you start.” Maybe that is my subconscious telling me to finish all the stuff I’ve started writing. Wow! I have a lot of work ahead of me.
All of the snow is gone now. We are lucky because we are not living in the Flood zone, even though we are close to the Red River. They declared Winnipeg a disaster zone. Most of the farmland south of Winnipeg is flooded and it looks like a huge lake. The Red River is 20 km wide in some areas. Some towns are isolated islands, cut off by flooded roads. North of Winnipeg many houses and cottages have been destroyed by giant chunks of ice that were pushed on land.
It proves again, Mother Nature is stronger than ‘Mighty Man’. Floods, hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes. We are helpless against the forces of nature. But of course, that is not enough. We still have to make war and kill each other. Another Canadian soldier, a young woman, was killed in Afghanistan a few days ago. What a shame. I cannot support that war, not anymore, even though I support the young men and women who are there fighting a losing battle. You can’t fight religion. We in the Western World are trying to push our ideas on people who have lived with their customs for over a thousand years. You can’t change people unless they want to change. Yes, it is crime how the women are treated in those countries and we want to help them, but what is the price we have to pay to bring about changes? How many people have to die? Do we have the right to interfere in other people’s affairs?
People in the so-called civilized free world have always meddled. Missionaries went to Africa to enlighten the people who lived in the jungle. They were perfectly happy before the Missionaries came. They didn’t want to be ’enlightened’. I could go on but I won’t. Those are facts of history and can’t be denied. Do-gooders and fanatics always believe that only their view is right and everyone else is wrong and needs to be freed from their evil ways.
Of course, there is more behind it than what it looks like at the surface. The need for power and control is one of the factors driving some of these people. Money and greed are two more. Let’s face it, we are a violent race, and this will go on forever as long as mankind does not evolve and learn from mistakes.

Happy Easter

Spring is here for sure, even though we still have snow on the ground. We’re finally getting warmer weather. The coming week it is supposed to stay above zero Celsius even at night. That means the snow should be melting away. I picked some pussy willows yesterday and I saw my first Robin. The geese are also coming back in huge flocks.



I did not get a chance to take a picture of the Robin I saw, but I found this one on this cool site http://www.treknature.com/gallery/North_America/Canada/photo48252.htm




Happy Easter to everyone.

Only the geese are happy

Took a ride down to Lockport for a look at the St. Andrews Lock and Dam. This is what it looked like:








Like the title says: Only the geese are happy.

A little update

Spring is supposed to be here but looking outside it doesn’t appear that way with all of that snow still on the ground. We had some warm weather a couple of weeks ago and the snow was beginning to melt. But then it got cold again and we had another snowstorm which dumped more snow onto the ice that had been forming. The culverts are still frozen and the water has not been able to drain toward the Red River. We don’t live far from the river. I’m a bit worried that we might get water in our basement from overland flooding. We’ve never had problems before but that doesn’t mean anything. Like they say when you invest money in the stock market: Past performance does not guarantee future results.
The river rose quite a bit last week and there was some flooding along River Road. A few houses had their basements filled with water. Now the municipality raised the surface of the road by putting gravel on it. In some places the road was raised up to six feet. Actually, the road is acting like a dam that is supposed to keep the water away from the properties on the other side. The river level has dropped a little but it will rise again when the water comes up from the States. Maybe even higher than before. Apparently it is not to reach the level we had in the Flood of the Century in 1997. Much of the land south of Winnipeg will still be flooded. Winnipeg will be spared with the expansion of the floodway around the city.

This is a picture of the ice that was pushed up onto the road while it drifted down the river toward Lockport.




This is River Road with a view toward Lockport. It won’t take much until the water floods the road

We went to the Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg last week to see the display of dinosaur skeletons. The display was lent to the museum from China. Some of the skeletons are genuine but most were replicas of originals. To read about dinosaurs is interesting but to see the skeletons is mind boggling. It is hard to believe that these giant creatures once roamed the Earth so many millions of years ago. I’m glad I wasn’t alive then. But maybe I was? Some people call me a dinosaur.

I haven’t done much writing. Been busy installing a new floor in our kitchen. I used those laminate floorboards that just click together. Apparently it’s easy and anyone can do it. What a nightmare with all the angles around the counters! It took me a whole week of measuring, cutting, and clicking (and cursing) until I finally finished it. I still have the back hall to do but that will be a cinch now that I’m an expert. (Ha, ha…)

I’ve been tracking my sales on Fictionwise and found that my books seem to be selling quite well. Six of my books were in the top twenty sellers on March 14, with ‘Mother of Light (The Xandra, Book Two) being at number 7, Goddess of Life at number 9 and Seeds of Chaos, Book One at number 10. Seeds of Chaos, Book Two was number 5 in overall sales in the twenty days before March 21. Dual Visions was number 4 on March 21 and Cliffs of Time reached number 7 on March 29 in overall sales.
Stardogs Two (Redemption) reached number 3 in sales on February 7. How many books that translates into I have no idea. Unfortunately, the money I receive for my books is so pitiful it is hardly worth mentioning. Fictionwise takes most of the money. It seems to be the Law of the Universe: The one who does most of the work gets rewarded the least.
But that’s okay…I guess. I write for fun and not for the money (Grrr….)

King Cobra

My novel ‘Mark of the Cobra’, which I pulled from publication by MSFiction last year has now found a home. I did some revisions, changed the chapters around, changed the title to ‘King Cobra’, and sent it to another publisher. This publisher concentrates more on erotica and is more suitable for the type of novel King Cobra is.
I don’t write sweet romance. My stories are mostly geared up to male readers. I’m not saying that women can’t enjoy them if they like these kinds of stories. By all means, do read them. Most of my stories have a male protagonist. The heroes are tough and usually oversexed (horny?).
King Cobra has a lot of sex in it and also some violence, but I believe it is basically a good story, a thriller, and I didn’t want to re-write the whole book, as my editor at MSFiction suggested. Had I decided to do that it would have been a different story, not the one I wanted to tell. Maybe some day I will write a novel with the title ‘Mark of the Cobra’, but it will be another story.
I am busy with other works right now. I’ve reached 60,000 words with my Science Fiction novel ‘Epsilon’ and I have much more to go before it is finished.
Right now I’m taking a break from it and I’ve decided to write Book Four in the Xandra series. I had some ideas kicking around in my head and they wanted to come out. So far I’m at around 13,000 words. I’m aiming for 75,000 words, but this is something hard to predict. It all depends how it progresses. Usually, once the story starts to grow, more characters want to join and the novel becomes longer than planned. Strange, how things sometimes develop. A minor character who was only mentioned briefly suddenly wants a larger part in the story. And that is a good thing. That is how a story gets fleshed out and more interesting. This creation process is a wonderful thing and sometimes I ask myself Where the heck did this come from? It seems the deeper I move into the new world I’m creating the more stuff I notice and the more is to tell. Sometimes I have no idea where I’m going with what’s happening to the characters but it always seems to come together in the end. It is not only the reader who enjoys reading a story; the writer also enjoys writing it. And that is a good thing because I don’t read that much any more. If I didn’t find pleasure in writing where would I find my enjoyment? How would I be able to explore new and wonderful worlds?
Check out ‘King Cobra’ here and don’t be shocked by the explicit picture: A1AdulteBooks

You can also go to my website to read more about it.

President Barack Obama

I watched the Inauguration of Barack Obama with a lump in my throat, because I realized that I was witnessing something that would go down in the history books as one of the momentous events in the history of the world. Yes, the world, not just the United States of America. The fact that a black man whose father was not allowed in a restaurant frequented by white people not that many years ago could become the President of the mightiest country in the world was historic in itself, but I believe that President Barack Obama has a greater ambition than just being the most powerful man on Earth. He has a vision that will bring about great changes, not all of them popular with some people. It won’t happen overnight; many people will be disappointed and wonder if they made the right choice when they voted for him, but he has a difficult job ahead of him. There will be those who will try their best to make sure he fails, those whose toes he has to step on, those who want to control him, those who want to keep things the way they are. The greedy and the power-hungry who brought the economy of the world to the gloomy state where it is right now will want him gone. The enemies of the free world want him gone. Not everybody voted for him for their own reasons. Many are afraid to have a black president, afraid of what he might do to upset the status quo. That is the chance you take every time a new president is elected, no matter what his color.
The color of President Barack Obama’s skin should not matter; what matters is his charisma and his vision. Our world is facing an uncertain future and we need men like him. Men who are not afraid to change things, men who don’t abuse the power they have been given by waving a sword in front of them but reach out with an open hand, offering help instead of threats.
Maybe this will usher in a new and better world. Let’s hope so.

Orola, Warrior Priestess

It is finally available from MSFiction: Orola, Warrior Priestess. The book was written in the space of about 10 years. It consists of a number of short stories featuring Orola. She lives on the Island of Witches. She is not quite human and possesses certain abilities. She is a warrior priestess who worships the god Solar who resides on one of the moons circling the planet she lives on. It is a primitive planet, forgotten by the rest of the Galaxy. Orola travels across hostile territories to find out what happened to one of her sisters who was the adviser of the queen in one of the provinces to the north.
The short stories are all connected. They are not about love and romance. They are dark stories, dealing with rape and revenge and contain much erotica. When I originally sent them to my publisher MSFiction I wasn't sure if the book would be accepted. It was, but my editor culled much out of the stories to make them acceptable for publication. I am happy with the way the book turned out.
To find out more about the book visit my website or check out MSFiction for an excerpt.

Changeling

We went to see the movie Changeling. Clint Eastwood did a wonderful job as the director and Angelina Jolie’s performance as the mother whose son disappears is superb. The storyline is set in the late 1920s when women had few rights. What makes it so heart wrenching is the fact that this is based on a true story.
I read the reviews before we went and as usual, some reviews were positive and some negative. This is not a movie for people who love action flicks, because it is not that kind of a movie. Younger viewers probably won’t like it either. There are no gadgets, no ear-deafening endless car chases, no computer generated animation, no mindless fight scenes. This a wonderful movie and I am glad I decided to go and see it, even though it was darn cold outside. This movie touches you heart and leaves you wondering about the awful things Humans are capable of doing to others. There are such few good movies made these days. Changeling is one of those good movies.