Lens Artists Challenge # 117: A Photo Walk (with Follow-Up Walk The Next Day)

You are invited to share your photo walk, whether park, beach or street. As always, we are looking forward to seeing your creative responses. — The World Is a Book

Self’s walk: just down the block.

Self knows, this is not much of a walk. And she wishes she could have taken more pictures. But even taking these three were hard. At one house, she heard a kid say, “Mommy, why is that woman taking pictures of our house?” She skedaddled!

This neighborhood is BIG on Halloween decorations, self will try taking pictures of the more elaborately decorated houses tomorrow.

NEMESIS GAMES: Realism

Self is still reading Heaven, My Home (which is FAN-TAS-TIC), but as she’s a fan of The Expanse, and they just released the trailer for Season 5 (which drops on Dec. 16 — self can hardly wait), she’s also started reading Book # 5 of the series, Nemesis Games.

She read the first four books early in the pandemic — big, big thanks to James S. A. Corey for helping her power through those first mind-numbing weeks.

MILD SPOILER

Each book starts with a pulse-pounding prologue, and Nemesis Games is no exception. Here’s a description of an attack on the Martian shipyards at Callisto, an attack carried out by a fifteen-year-old. More than anything, self loves the realism of the action scenes:

• At zero, the second strike came. Filip didn’t see the rock hit. As with the tungsten slugs, it was going much too fast for mere human sight, but he saw the dust cloud jump like someone had surprised it, and then the vast shock wave, blooming out so powerfully that even in the barely extant atmosphere it was visible.

Chapter One is “a year after the Callisto attacks … ” Holden is overseeing repairs on the Rocinante. YAAAAS! Self has missed Holden, this most unusual of heroes, a space slacker who nevertheless lavishes attention on his ship and his crew. Three years have elapsed since the last book: Is Holden in his late 30s now? From here on out, they’ll have to start aging up Steven Strait, the actor who plays him in the series. He started doing Holden when he was 28.

She’ll try not to share so much of Nemesis Games. Next posts will be all Heaven, My Home.

Stay tuned.

CALL FOR ENTRIES: Palm Springs Int’l Film Festival, Shortfest 2021

Palm Springs International Film Festival: 22 – 28 June, 2021

psfilmfest.org

Early Bird Deadline: 4 December 2020

Regular Deadline: 15 January 2021

Late Deadline: 19 February 2021

HEAVEN, MY HOME, pp. 5 – 6

Attica Locke! Love the atmosphere of this. Self may just have found a new favorite mystery writer.

The setting, a lake, “inlets like a tangle of snakes on the Texas side, at least the part that sat in Marion County”:

The antenna was bent halfway down, and in the pockets of silence, a deeper kind of fear took hold. He’d heard the lake went silent come nightfall, Spanish moss on the cypress trees dampening all sound, so that you could feel in this primeval lake on the edge of the state, this swamp at the edge of time, that you were the last man alive.

Poetry Saturday: Cristina Querrer

The Man Who Lives on the Crooked Lane

An Excerpt

There is a man
who lives slantingly
with an uneven sky
peeking through
missing teeth
of the Venetian blinds

Has a yellow dog
that half yawns & half wags
walks sideways
like a sidewinder snake

---

Cristina Querrer was born in the Philippines and grew up as a U.S. Air Force military child. Querrer is also a U.S. Army Veteran with an MFA in Creative Writing. Her first full-length collection, By Astrolabes and Constellations, won the silver medal from the 2020 Florida Authors & Publishers Association President’s Award. She is also a visual artist, singer/songwriter, and podcaster.

“Spores” Again

In P-1, the teachers tell, Heaven is up a winding stair. Hell is like falling off the Whitecliffs — down and down and down and down. Limbo is — somewhere between. Those lessons always give me the frights.

Self’s first Tyrone Guthrie Centre story. Written 2014, Annaghmakerrig and Dublin.

“Spores” (decomP magazinE)

Thank you, decomP! Self’s first Tyrone Guthrie story. All voice.

• Humans are a small and fragile species. But we have the distinction of breeding almost as quickly as microbes. Sex is soporific and palliative. No one would attach a pejorative such as “meaningless” to any form of sexual activity. We’re all encouraged to do it as much as possible, as late as possible. Grandmothers in their sixties do it, as well as children as young as eleven or twelve. It’s considered a patriotic activity.

New Book: Heaven, My Home

p. 6:

The old man steered clear of the lake after dark, always warning Levi how easy it was for a man to get turned around once night fell if he was moving solely by the light of a weak headlamp or a shy moon. The lake was big and complex — a wetland maze that had mystified outsiders for hundreds of years.

Exciting opening!

wsj, Wednesday 7 October 2020

Yes, self knows it is already Friday, but her mind is slow as slow these days. She regards this as a public service post, so readers will know our situation is extremely dire. In the meantime, Cadet Bonespurs keeps tweeting like there’s no tomorrow.

p. A6:

TOP MILITARY LEADERS QUARANTINED

Joint Chiefs isolate after meeting with admiral who later got a positive test

by Nancy A. Youssef and Gordon Lubold

Washington — Several of the nation’s top uniformed military officers went into quarantine Monday night after attending meetings at the Pentagon with a Coast Guard admiral who tested positive this week for Covid-19.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, a body that consists of the top commanders from each of the armed services, held meetings that included Coast Guard Adm. Charles Ray, the vice commander, who then tested positive on Monday after exhibiting symptoms over the weekend, the Coast Guard said. Adm. Ray has since been quarantined at home.

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

Pumpkin Fest This Weekend!

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Soni & David’s Mini Pumpkin Fest 2020

Saturday/Sunday, Oct. 10/11

Time: 12 – 4 p.m.

Location: 716 Gilbert Avenue (David’s Free Library)

Fun festive gifts for Halloween and Holiday Season

Bring Your Mask. Social Distancing is Good. Hand Sanitizer Will Be Available.

15% will be donated to Sierra Club for climate change.

For more information: soni@sonidesigns.com

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Have a wonderful weekend!