Ok, so we can probably rule out me being the reincarnation of Robert Frost, who died 15 months before I was born.

There is an upcoming anthology, a two-parter, entitled Trumpocalypse and Trumptopia. I missed the deadline for the former but submitted a poem for the latter. It was declined because it would have been better for the first volume but it was too late for it to be included.

So I figured I would just drop this here and let you decide if my career as a poet should end at one.

KEK WILLS IT!

By Richard Paolinelli

An intrepid pilgrim was I, venturing across this great land;

My destination a wondrous city, not far from a great blue sea.

I had last beheld the glorious sight with much younger eyes;

And now I could only guess that which my older sight would now see.

For so very long it had stood for values and principles most high;

Of the greatness of all and the immeasurable value of even the lowest one.

A brilliant beacon it was that shone clear and bright around the globe;

Calling out to all humanity no matter from where, promising not to shun.

Yet, as the years and decades passed by the luster began to fade;

Tarnished and dimmed by lesser men’s lust for power and their greed.

Until finally the shining city by the sea became cloaked in darkness;

A place that now openly celebrated an immoral man or woman’s misdeed.

But then came a man, who gilded himself with self-aggrandizement and fine gold;

Still he gave hope to all of the people, though exactly how is beyond my ken.

He spoke no words of specificity, offered no detail and set no promises in stone;

Yet they were happy to hear from him nothing other than making them great again.

Then came the day when the people’s new hero rose to take the sacred “crown”;

Taking his place within the sacred great room of the people’s house of white.

Many, both within the city and the great land beyond, began to rejoice;

For now, at long last after all the grim years, everything was going to be alright.

Thus was the state of the land when I arrived in the great shining city by the sea;

To see for myself if the path ahead led to a sweet heaven or a living hell.

At first the city seemed to be little changed from the one seated in my memory;

With each step I took within its confines I began to believe all is truly well.

Yet here and there I caught a whispered word, a cautionary tale being shared;

Of evil thoughts, vile deeds and conspiracies with former enemies of old.

Of money quietly exchanged under the cloak of night and laws circumvented;

Of loyalties betrayed and foul plots where any man can be bought and sold.

In response to the onslaught of grim charges the people merely shrug and dismiss;

In their hearts and minds they judge them to be baseless slander and lie.

They speak of one called “Pepe” and another called “Kek”, in loving terms;

They see no reason that the name of “Kekistan” to the land they should apply.

Such is the state of their joy, their rush to embrace their new destiny;

That they no longer identify as “We The People”, they are now “We The Covfefe.”

All the words that put such fear and sorrow into the hearts of the disgruntled few;

Are perfectly clear and understandable, I am told, to those who can truly see.

At length, among statues of a green frog, I encountered a man once honorable and true;

A man who now served the great leader, tasked to speak his words to the people outside.

He would take me to see his master in the oval room within the walls of the great house;

There I could see the truth of it all for myself and any concern of mine would subside.

As quiet as a church mouse I followed my new friend inside to the oval room;

Then the man of the hour arrived in a strange sort of gilded-golden orange glow.

In only a few short moments within his presence I was greatly shocked to find;

That, save for myself, all of the others in the room had prostrated themselves low.

Then my spokesman guide arose from one bent knee and approached his master;

Leaning close with eyes downcast, he asked what words he should speak this day.

“The Covfefe wanted back the jobs that had long ago left for other lands;”

“They’ll come back by the millions”, the master replied, “this much I can say.”

“The Covfefe fear the strangers at the gate, especially those that bring with them hate;”

“They want to know the bad will be kept out, that it is safe to go to the mall.”

“Tell them,” the master said, “that no one knows better than me how to keep them safe.”

“We will build a great barrier to keep out the terror, it will be bigly, that wall.”

“The Covfefe wonder,” the spokesman inquired, “if your heart remains true;

“How can it be pure, when you reach out in friendship to one sworn to defeat us.”

“Their concerns are unfounded,” the master scoffed, “There is nothing there;

“By the way, look at these hands, none bigger ever on one that was POTUS.”

Without another word the spokesman slowly turned away from his master;

He made his way to the curtained balcony and parted the drape without trepidation.

“Kek wills it!” he bellowed, and just those words only, to the Covfefe outside;

“Kek wills it!” the myriad Covfefe gathered below screamed back in rapturous adulation.

I slowly slipped away from the room in dismay, quickly departing the once great house;

To return to my homelands, this was my only thought, this place now become a phobia.

And when returned home from my journey, my neighbors asked what I had found;

All I could say was the Covfefe had chosen the wrong name, it was clearly Trumptopia.

In 2001 a new cartoon, Samurai Jack, hit the airwaves and for four great seasons Jack battled the evil Aku, trying to get back to the past and undo the evil Aku had inflicted on the Earth for centuries.

When season four ended in 2004, Jack was still trapped in a future dominated by Aku and it seemed – as was the case in many TV shows that were cancelled before the story line was completed – we would never learn Jack’s ultimate fate.

But earlier this year Cartoon Network brought back the Samurai for one last 10-episode season and I have to say it was the perfect conclusion that we shouldn’t have had to wait over a decade for.

While the final episode wrapped up the series with perfectly classic Japanese tragedy, I did have one technical issue with the time-delay it took for the tragic event to occur. (No spoilers here, sorry. You’ll have to watch the final episode yourself).

Still, despite that tiny flaw, this was a reboot/return that was executed quite well.

Sadly, I can’t say the same for the recent return to the Twin Peaks series. I understand that with the show being on Showtime now instead of on broadcast television that they can slip in the obligatory sex scene and nudity for the sake of nudity.

But my biggest complaint just four episodes into the reboot is the pacing. Too many extended shots showing nothing – a car driving down a road at night for example and ending every episode with a singer or band performing – have me wondering if they are just filling in time to justify however many episodes they were approved for.

It also seems they are struggling to recapture the magic of the two-year run of the original series from 1990 and 1991 and coming up a little short. I’m wondering how, or even if, they plan on explaining why Michael Ontkean’s Sheriff Harry S. Truman is no longer sheriff but there is a Sheriff Frank Truman (played by Robert Forrester). Or why Dale Cooper has returned after 25 years but hasn’t a clue who he is now that he is back, but seemed to be fully cognisant before his return.

Most series have some bumps and bruises in the first season and many go on to be quite good. But you would expect a show that had two prior seasons under its belt and with most of its original cast back to get off to a better start than this.

I’ll stay with it for a few more weeks, hoping they can get on track. David Duchovny’s brilliant appearance in the show alone is worth that investment (and I hope that wasn’t a one-and-done for him).

But if they keep dragging out scenes and not getting on with the show, about two or three more episodes is all they’ll get.

There is a blogger, nominated for an award and neither of them are worthy of being named or even having a link posted and I have no intention of giving either one single ounce of publicity. But there is something this blogger recently stated that needs to be addressed. No, it needs to be bludgeoned so that it will never be stated again.

This blogger is of the opinion that Anne McCaffrey – merely one of the most prolific writers (male or female) and certainly one of the most successful female authors of all time – is no longer relevant to science fiction. Anything not written within the last 15 years, so says this blogger, is not relevant either.

Asimov, Herbert, Wells, Verne, Clarke, Harrison, Adams, etc, etc. All of the giants in science fiction are no longer of value.

It’s like saying Albert Einstein is no longer relevant to science because he hasn’t done anything in the last 15 years.

And that, if you will excuse my French, is a steaming pile of horseshit.

It is becoming an alarming trend among the younger generation today, to totally discount the works done prior to the year of their birth.

It’s wrong and it’s disrespectful and it needs to stop.

The writings, the works in any field, of the past have great value. It is up to those who read, listen or view them to open their minds to all these works have to say.

Even if you cannot do that then at least have the courtesy, the decency, to not denigrate them so that others won’t hear what they have to say.

Growing up in a drilling family, we moved about quite a lot. It was not uncommon for me to start a school year in one school, finish the year in a second and start the next year in a third.

So most of the time I would head for the library during any free time at school rather than try to get to know people I’d never see again. Some of the first authors I discovered were Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe and it did not take me too long to read everything they’d ever written.

So when my short story “A Lesson In Mercy” was one of 10 Sherlock Holmes pastiches included in Beyond Watson and “The Woman Returns” was one of 20 to make up Holmes Away From Home you can just imagine how much pride and joy I was feeling that I had joined Holmes’ world.

Now I have an opportunity to take that up one level. Belanger Books, the publisher of the previously mentioned collections, is preparing another collection of original adventures for the Great Detective. The twist on this one has Holmes intermixing in the universe of one H.G. Wells.

If you thought for a second that I would pass up a chance to see what I can do with two of my earliest literary favorites, well, you should know better. You should also know that I’d take it up one more notch.

You see, the story I’m putting together not only sees Holmes interacting with Wells, it also directly involves Poe. The trifecta!

Will it be accepted? I don’t know, but I certainly hope so. But even if it should not make the final cut, it is still going to be a blast doing it. And if you think you’ve got a story that will fit in with the upcoming project, please drop Derrick Belanger an e-mail at derrick@belangerbooks.com and include the word SUBMISSION in the subject heading. In the body include your name, a brief synopsis of your story, and your story length (# of words). Stories should be between the 5,000 and 10,000-word range and must be e-mailed by July 15th.

Come my fellow Sherlockians! The game is afoot!

What with all the doom and gloom in the news lately I thought it might be nice to focus on something positive for a change. Like the fact that it is May 10th and the Colorado Rockies are alone in first place in their division this year!!!!!

Yay!!!!! I might actually get to wear my Rockies gear past June 1st this season!!!!!

Usually by mid-May – with one a couple of rare exceptions – the Rockies are already mathematically eliminated from post-season play. No really, I’m not exaggerating.

Of course, if the Rockies remain in contention it is going to infringe on my pre-season prepping for the football season (Dallas Cowboys, UCLA and North Dakota State) in late July and the next hockey season (Los Angeles Kings) and yes I know the Stanley Cup playoffs for this year are still going but as long as a Canadian team doesn’t win, I don’t care – more on that in a later post.

Basketball at every level is dead to me and has been since David Stern let the Pistons in the late 1980s transform the game from its original form into legalized street rioting.

So for now, I’ll be enjoying the Rockies early success and looking forward to a game in June when I get to watch them play the Dodgers in person. I’m hoping to purchase the same two seats I once owned as a season ticket holder in 1989 but we’ll have tom wait and see what happens.

So, who’s your favorite team – any sport and yes I’ll allow basketball (LA Lakers & UCLA are mine) – and how do you think they are/will be doing?

And speaking of sports, I’ve written a couple of historical sports non-fiction titles, in case you like to read about sports back in the day. Check them out here (Perfection’s Arbiter) and here (From The Fields)

For the last couple of years I’ve been what is known as a hybrid writer. Both traditionally and independently published. There were some books I wanted total control over from start to finish and indie publishing offers exactly that.

But I was also traditionally published and I even had an agent, one I signed up with back in 2014. I had always wanted to be traditionally published through an agent and I was thrilled beyond description on that day in 2015 when Reservations was released and I held the first hard copy of it in my hands.

Without going into the details, and by mutual agreement, my agent and my publisher and I have decided to go our own ways. So I can now scratch out both hybrid and traditional when I’m asked how I’m published.

What this means for the Jack Del Rio series I haven’t decided yet. The first two books were the ones I had written before seeking an agent and the other two were added to sell as a series. So if I should decide to end it with Betrayals, I can live with that. At this time, there is certainly no rush to decide.

Would I consider getting another agent and being traditionally published again? I honestly don’t know. I won’t close the door on the idea forever but, for now at least, I think I very much want to try going on the path of indie publishing and see where it takes me.

So keep following this blog – which is also now my official author website – for news, reviews and updates along with the occasional scribble on the news of the day and take the journey with me.

No matter where it ends, it should be a hell of a ride.

So apparently some new “friends” from another blog, that purports to be about sci-fi but is running about 80% politics, have taken umbrage with my post on “Bein’ Born” the other day.

I’m not surprised. As my grandfather used to say: “When you toss a rock into a pack of dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit.”

And brother, are they a yelping over there. Now, I’m not going to drop a link or mention any names, mainly because I want to spare you the abuse on your eyes of having to read their vile nonsense. But I will give you some of the highlights.

My favorite was the absolute inability to comprehend what was written. I started the post off by mentioning Johnny Ringo from the film, Tombstone, and that he was a deranged, depraved creature. I ended the post by pointing out that the SJZs are very much like that specific Johnny Ringo, deranged and depraved.

Yet one commenter over there seems to discard the opening paragraphs of my post and claims that I compared the SJZs to a very good author named John Ringo and he might not be happy with the comparison. He isn’t because he has outstanding reading comprehension and knows the difference between John Ringo and Johnny Ringo and he knows exactly who the SJZs were being compared to.

But this is SOP for SJZs. Hit with an inconvenient truth, they lie.

They also like to do snark. For example: “Those writers with blogs don’t allow comments. What are they afraid of?”

Well, nothing. Because, like this blog, on every writers’ blogs I’ve checked out comments are welcome. Foul-mouthed, juvenile insults without any substance are not.

Sadly, those are the only kind of comments the SJZs are capable of. Which is why they hang out in that vile cesspool of nothingness of theirs. And I hope they keep over there.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments and answer any questions you might have. Just keep it PG-13 or better, okay? Bear with me though, sometimes my schedule gets so insane that I am unable to check in here for a few days at a time.