May 26th, 2020: A Useful Virus

     Earlier this year, in the month of March, I began to hear of a terrible virus. It goes by many names. It's called COVID-19, the coronavirus, the Wuhan virus, the China virus, and there are probably others out there that I have never heard. When I first heard about it, I just thought that it was another thing that I had to watch out for to stay healthy. I gave it the same weight as the flu, or pneumonia, or bronchitis, or any number of other illnesses that attack my respiratory system. I have had problems throughout my life with those kinds of diseases but always recovered fully, although as I get older, it takes me longer.

     This disease is different, I am told. This one is killing thousands of people. This one is particularly deadly to those over 60, and those who have serious health problems already. At 69, and with diabetes and atrial fibrillation, I fall into both of those categories. I learned a new word through all of this: comorbidity. Oxford Languages defines it as "the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient." If I also contracted COVID-19, I would actually have three.

     I have never dwelt on my health issues. I treat my diabetes several times daily and monitor my heart rate for anything out of the ordinary, but I don't live in fear of these sicknesses. I even believe that if I did catch this new virus, I would survive it, but if you don't mind, I'd just as soon skip that experience if at all possible.

     I wear a mask out in public, and I stay a healthy distance away from people I come in contact with. Since I'm retired, we basically stay home anyway unless we have to venture out to gather food. I've participated in my church's online service as the leader of the Worship Team, learning all about how to record hymns for the church to enjoy during their services, as well as doing live broadcasts from my home. I hear from one group of people that I am being a good boy and following all the guidelines, while another group tells me that I am living in fear and should be out there trying to reclaim my constitutional rights.

     One keyword in this is "guidelines." The things that we are being asked to do are suggestions based on our leadership's interpretations of the arbitrary group of experts to whom they have chosen to listen. They aren't laws, but somehow, we get threatened with fines and jail time if we choose not to follow them. How does that work? When the government tells us that they "strongly suggest" something, but we say, "Thanks for the information, but I'm not going to do that." then where does the law come into it? I think some leaders look at COVID-19 as a very "useful virus."

     I'm not all that much of a rebel. I listen to what everyone is saying, and try to be a good citizen, but I fully understand the concerns of those who worry about our rights being trampled. I think I can fit into both of those categories, being obedient while protesting government overreach. It breaks my heart to see companies that were flourishing before this, but are now being run out of business through no fault of their own.

     I can state categorically that I have no fear. I came to terms with my own mortality at a very early age, and if the grim reaper finds me today, I'd like to think I would go with quiet dignity, praising God for the life He graciously gave me.

     What I fear is the total chaos that is present in today's world. We are given horrific numbers of people who have died from this virus, and then later are told that the records are being skewed to generate more federal dollars for the hospitals. One state went from 1600 deaths down to 850 overnight because of misreporting that was being corrected. It almost sounded like 750 people were resurrected from the dead overnight.

     We are told that masks will protect us, but there are an equal number of articles out there saying that they don't do anything for us. Chloroquine will shut the virus down, but oh, wait, it can kill some people instead. We will supposedly have a vaccine anywhere from this September to five or six years from now, if ever. We now have "a new normal."

      There are people out there using this virus for their own personal gain, and they should be ashamed of themselves. Scammers call our homes to tell us that they have our COVID-19 relief funds ready to send us if we would just verify our social security number and bank account. Politicians are passing bills that send inadequate amounts of money to the people being hurt by this virus while forwarding millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, illegal aliens, voting corruption schemes, and pork projects to help themselves get re-elected.

     ...And then there's, "We are all in this together." I'm sorry, but how am I in the same boat as a politician who has not lost one cent of his pay, and according to some reports, even voted himself a raise? Some people lost their jobs but actually received more money from unemployment than they would if they kept working. The people considered essential (an extremely arbitrary determination in many cases) got nothing extra for their diligence and willingness to risk their health to help serve the public. To imply that somehow, we are all equally affected by this virus and the subsequent rules and regulations is ludicrous.

     How about those essential workers? While I can see police, firemen, doctors, and nurses being vitally essential, how is a liquor store in any way, shape, or form essential? I could send a female to have an abortion, but don't let them catch her entering a church!

     The insanity needs to stop. It is time to let people be the people and make their own decisions about what they will and won't do. We definitely need to be out there petitioning our leaders on every level to open up our cities and states so our nation can heal.   

January 29th, 2020: All My Heroes...

     I was sitting around thinking the other day and something came to me. I realized that all of my heroes were now dead.

     Now, I'm not talking about fictional characters. A good many of them are still around, although our culture is changing them into something unrecognizable. Comic book heroes nowadays have to change to conform to new values that our society wants to force upon us. Those values are not actually new; they have been around for a long time. We just recognized them as wrong and are expected to accept them as normative now.

     You may think my first hero is silly for a grown man, but the one fictional character in my list played an integral part in my youth and helped me deal with rejection. Leonard Nimoy's "Mr. Spock" was a hybrid of two very different cultures. His mother was an emotional human, while his father was a stoic, logical, and emotionless alien from the planet Vulcan. This mirrored my life in that my father was a very strict, logical individual who loathed discussing anything involving feelings, while Mom was romantic, emotional, sometimes silly, and playful, and helped me deal with the typical teenage highs and lows that most young people go through. In Spock, I found a role model who taught me to master my emotions and feed the logical, hungry for learning side of myself. He came at just the right time in my life to help me grow into the person I am today. He passed on February 27, 2015.

     I never had a brother, but in December of 1969, I met a man who believed in me like no one else had. He hired me to work in the pizza place he managed and very quickly told me that he saw great potential in me. He gave me my first management job, stood up for me in so many ways, introduced me to my first wife, and remained a good friend up until his death on November 20th, 2016. Wayne McCuan was one of four men in my life I considered brothers.

     When we are born into this life, we don't come with an instruction manual. Some people make wonderful parents, while others struggle with it. I was an inquisitive kid, with a penchant for getting into trouble. My dad had grown up with a strict father and became just like him. There were many instances where I wished my father had simply sat down with me and explained what I had done wrong, but instead, we were physically punished. I watched over the years, and after mom died in 1975, I saw a different man emerge. He began to attend church and became a dedicated worker for them. He was active right up until the year that he passed away. I admired the way he turned his life around and enjoyed visiting with him twice a year after I moved away. I could always count on him to give me good advice and listen to the things that troubled me over the years. I gave him a copy of one of my books when I began to write and he looked at it thoroughly and said, "Well, time travel is interesting." I knew he did not read science fiction; I just wanted him to see what I was doing, and I could tell he was proud. I lost him on August 17, 2018.

     I was saved in 1970 at the age of 19. I began to attend different branches of the Anderson, Indiana Church of God, but I would come and go, losing interest and never fully committing to working in the church. In 1986, a lot of things changed for me. I had a new job, we moved into a new house, and I began to go back to church, determined to give more of myself. I served on a few committees and gave it all my very best. I started to be noticed and made new friends all of the time. One man, Paul Arthur, sang in the choir with me and became a friend and brother in Christ. although older than me, he was like family, and he encouraged me to sing a duet with him in front of the church, something I never envisioned myself doing. The response was so positive that I soon began singing solos and was even asked to sing at a couple of weddings, youth convention, and youth camp. Paul talked me into being a youth counselor, which was very fulfilling for me, and my attention to the teens I was responsible for was noticed by my pastor. When our youth pastor left the church, I was asked to be his replacement for the next fourteen months. All of this made for the most rewarding period of my entire life, and it all started with Paul. We lost him on October 14th of 2019.
    My last hero was my pastor in Houston. Fred Davey was a very wise man who knew how to help people grow closer to God in significant ways. He taught me about sanctification and prayer and encouraged me to be more than I had ever been before. He showed his faith in me as a person by asking me to become the interim youth minister and prayed daily with me when I served as the Chairman of the Church Council and had to deal with one of the most divisive issues that church had faced during my time there. He was more like a father to me than a pastor, and his love and friendship was cherished by me. We lost Pastor Davey on August 6, 2019.

     I know that one day, there will be a great reunion with those who have moved on to their rewards, and I look forward to that day. I am inspired each day by the part each of them played in molding me into the human being that I am today and work to be deserving of the gifts that they gave me.

August 22, 2019: Innocense Be Hanged!

     Sometimes if I've been away from writing for a while, it takes a bit for me to get back into those good habits of sitting down at a set time and getting right into my story. I suppose it is a form of writer's block, and my response to writer's block has always been the same: I write anyway. I have generally found that if I sit down and write, even when I don't feel like writing, I do get some work done, even if it is not good work, and I can always go back when my muse wakes up again and fix the parts that are weak or bad.

     Another thing that sometimes works well for me is to step away from the story I am writing and write something else. It can be a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or even notes for a project that I've set down for the future. The idea is to move forward and get into that groove again that gets the job done.

     I came up with an idea for a different kind of short story several years ago, and it has remained for me, so I feel like it is a story I need to write. The idea is about a young traveler who goes into a town and after talking to several of the townspeople, finds out that everyone in the town is named Oswell Framwinkle. Every man, woman, and child goes by that same unusual name for some reason, so the young visitor decides that he must try to get to the bottom of it all and find out why the town is like this. He tracks it down to an incident that happen several decades earlier that involved an innocent wizard who was hanged unjustly by a corrupt judicial system. There is a curse, a mysterious cottage out in the woods where it is always storming, and a middle aged wizard who seems to know all about the situation.

     I usually don't write sorcery books, but this one wants to haunt me until I write it, so while I am waiting for my inspiration for Book Three of the Word series to return, I have decided to work on this story a bit. If I can pull this story together from my notes, I hope to use it to assemble an anthology of all of my short stories and novellas and publish it in paperback format for those who have wanted a physical copy of the stories that I have published over the years in ebook format.

     I have already begun the work, and will be building the story from the copious notes that I made when the idea came to me. With any luck and a lot of hard work, I should be able to get the story done in the next couple of months. 

July 31st, 2019: Book Two of Word Series released!

 

     Well, after many setbacks due to life events, I have finally gotten the second book of the Word Series published. Book One, "Let No Word Be Spoken" introduced Captain Henderson Johns, a jumpship captain who traveled the galaxy to negotiate peace and set up trade agreements. On his way back from one such mission, the ship's navigation array malfunctions, requiring his two crew members to go outside the ship and repair the antennae. After finishing the repair, they are struck suddenly by some space debris that kills them, leaving Johns alone on the ship.

     He drifts in space for a while, looking for fuel to make the trip back home to return the bodies to their families. Locating a planet with the elements he needs, he tries to go in for a landing, but ends up crashing on the planet. When he comes to, he is in excruciating pain, but finds himself being attended to by the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

     There is much more to the story, as Johns learns about the culture of the planet's beautiful red haired female inhabitants and their religion. He realizes that there are no males on the planet, and everyone communicates by telepathy.

     The book ended with Johns being banished from the planet by the world governing agency know as the Compendium.

     Book Two opens up shortly after Johns' removal from the alien world. He is still in touch with Loran Evandell, the alien that made sure he was nursed back to health after his crash. Johns is back at his job, helping the king of the planet Wellis figure out why his subjects seem to dislike him so much. In the process, Johns meets the megalomaniac Ros Maycon, who is plotting to take over Wellis, and that is just the beginning.

     Johns, Loran, and the crew of the jumpship Dreamer's Fortune face their trials bravely, working to stop the machinations of the evil Maycon.

     Book Two should be available for purchase as an ebook or paperback within the next couple of days on Amazon. Look for my books under M Ray Holloway Jr. You might check out some of my short stories as well, like "The Deathburger Saga" or "The Picture of the Ghost". 

January 25, 2019: I am NOT a Christian!

To my dismay,
I have learned over the past few years that

I am NOT a Christian!

During the time that Barrack Obama was the president of this great nation, I saw several people post on social media the following:

If you support Obama, you CANNOT be a Christian! It just doesn't work that way!

Ironically, I have seen the same post about Donald Trump. "If you support Trump, you CANNOT be a Christian!"

So, I cannot support a Democrat president or a Republican president without jeopardizing my relationship with God and Jesus Christ? What about Independents? Is my soul safe if I support them? Are Libertarians safe to back? Is there a list somewhere that I can refer to before I choose a candidate to vote for? To whom has God given the authority to make these decisions?

Seriously, there is a lot of unchristian behavior going around in politics, and it is not limited to any one party. For too long, the American people have been forced to hold their noses and vote for one candidate or the other because in their subjective opinion, that candidate is less bad than the other one. It has been a while for me since I have had two shining candidates to choose from. Every person that Washington puts forward for us to vote on is marred with flaws and we find ourselves having to ask the question, "Whose flaws are the least disgusting?" Every voter has to make that decision for themselves.

Barrack Obama had "Fast and Furious", Benghazi, and sent billions of dollars to a country that makes it clear that its goal in this world is to destroy America and Israel. He turned Nasa into some kind of good will program for Muslims. He traveled to other countries to apologize for America, and declared America to be a Muslim nation despite the historical record of it being founded on Christian principles.

Donald Trump has made some disgusting comments that are extremely demeaning to women, he uses ridicule regularly to mock his political opponents, for example, Pocahontas. His tone and mannerisms drag down the dignity of the office of the president of the United States. He has been accused of having an affair while married, and critics are convinced that he plotted with Russia to steal the election away from the Democrats.

Which of these two could be said to uphold Christian values? When was the last time a president spoke out in support of the beliefs laid out for us in the Bible?

The kinds of statements mention in the beginning of this post are irresponsible and full of hate. They are definitely not helpful in any way. I am so weary of people who, failing to be able to intelligently discuss their viewpoints, resort to name calling and false innuendo.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior as a teenager, recognizing Him as the Son of God, and confessing my sins. I have studied the Bible all my life, and done the very best to live in accordance with the guidelines set forth there. I have served in many positions in the government of the churches I attended, including youth pastor and Christian counselor to many members of the congregation, and still serve to this day in the music ministry of my current church. I stand ready to testify about the greatness of God at any time.

My Christianity is not diminished in any way because I voted for some political candidate. There are Christians on both sides of any political argument. We will never solve the divide between the political parties leading our country with hate speech.

The Christ that I serve tells us that the greatest commandment in the Bible is to love one another, and I agree. Until we start opening our hearts, we will never find the unity that is so vital to leading this great country.

March 31, 2018: Looking to the Poetic

     One of the things I wanted to do when I started writing seriously was republish a small book of poetry that I assembled when I still lived in Houston. I had been writing poetry for the pleasure of my friends and family since the early seventies, and back in the late nineties, I put them together and printed them at the print shop I managed. The cover had been simple, and the book was not very large, but it felt good back then to have them all assembled into one book that I could offer my friends. I only printed about thirty copies, and they went pretty fast, so there was a second printing of another twenty.

     Since I had published three short stories when I retired, and I had garnered a small following, I decided to do a reprint with a new cover, and a new poem to go with it. This would be my first attempt at a paperback, and I hoped that it would do well. It did not. Most of the people who followed my poetry years earlier weren't interested in buying the new version and those who did not know me showed no interest at all. It's still out there, for anyone looking for my earlier work, but so far there have been few takers.

     It is a compilation of my best poetry written between 1970 and 1997 with one new piece that I wrote about my mother, who passed away when I was 25. I originally planned to publish three poetry books, and this was the first one. I selected my most encouraging poems for this volume, but the idea of the other two volumes was eventually dropped for other projects.

     The cover shown above was the mock-up for the new printing. 

March 13th, 2018: The Prequel no one Expected

     By the time that I got around to my third story, I had made some new author friends who were teaching me how they handled some of their stories. One thing that I heard from several writers is the idea of introducing characters for an upcoming novel by writing a short story featuring them. "Gretchen's Shoot" was that story. I had a novel that I wanted to write about a brilliant scientist who traveled back in time to fix some things in his life that he had messed up over the years. In that story, he had let the love of his life get away and ended up marrying someone else on the rebound. Because of his lack of real commitment to his "second fiddle" wife, the two of them were pretty miserable together.

     Gretchen was the wife that the scientist settled for, and as he buried himself in his work, she and her sister took up various sports before discovering wrestling. Learning that they were actually pretty good at it, they became one of the top tag teams in the league. Things were exciting, and they were at the top of their game until the managers of the league decided that it would be a huge draw to have the two sisters compete against each other. While the siblings let the idea roll around in their heads, Gretchen learned that her partner sister had seriously betrayed her trust in a way that deeply affected her personally. 

     Although this story is about the wrestling industry, I did not describe an actual wrestling match in the plot. The match between the two sisters plays an important part in demonstrating the relationship between the women, but it was not necessary to have a play by play of the contest.

     Why a wrestling story? It's hard to answer that because the saga pretty much wrote itself. It started as a prelude to "At Some Point in Time", but as I began making notes, the ideas flowed freely. I had an entirely different ending to the story when I started writing it, but it just didn't feel right to me. I needed this short story to mesh properly with the novel I was planning, so I shifted gears at the end to make it fit perfectly. It actually became more of a morality tale, which just made more sense. The whole plan was to create this crisis for Gretchen that she had to resolve before the meeting with her sister in the ring. She was at a crossroad, and the direction she took would determine how her life would progress.