You should skip this week's blog. It has little redeeming value, there aren't enough words in it to fully count as a complete blog, and I'm sorry to subject you to it. I'm willing to take responsibility for discussing the upcoming ridiculousness, but I'm not to blame if you proceed past this point.
 
From here on in, you're on your own. Consider this fair warning.

My allergies have been terrible this year, for whatever reason, and I've been feeling miserable. Coughing and sneezing, getting too little sleep, I was thisclose to demanding that Glynn take over the blog and force some magic from Microsoft Word...except that his week has been exceptionally busy, and I didn't want to put too much on his plate. Since my magical shoe-cobbling elves don't do words, this meant that I still didn't have a blog for 04/27/2017 and I didn't have any energy to write a blog for 04/27. All of which left me thisclose to leaving this space blank today -- which was something I didn't want to do.
 
My head is clouded, my mind is foggy, and I didn't even have a subject to discuss. Or I didn't until I learned, just today, that dinosaur erotica was a thing.
 
I read about the subject on a much more reliable website than my own. I didn't believe it truly existed, then couldn't wait to mention the idea to the Good Witch. She said, "Oh, sure, I've seen it. The covers, anyway. Go to Amazon, you'll find loads of the stuff." So I went to Amazon. I found loads of the stuff. I was -- and am -- fairly astounded. Not only are there buckets of these stories, many of them have glowing reviews.
 
I'm not saying that the crowd views this stuff as Pulitzer material, but it has its audience. 
 
It turns out, if you're of a particular mind, you can pick up a copy of Ravished by the Triceratops at this very moment. The story led one reviewer to offer, "I like the triceratops sex better than the human sex; after all, there's only so many things two people can do" -- and, at $2.99 for 15 pages, I don't care how many things that triceratops did, I'd want a little extra value for money. In seeking more pages for my dinosaur-erotica buck, I came across Helicopter Man Pounds Dinosaur Billionaire Ass. This is the oft-told tale of a man with the ability to transform into a helicopter who falls in love with a terribly wealthy male stegosaurus. One reviewer referred to it as, "The new 50 Shades of Grey." Other reviewers claimed that they, too, were able to transform into various flying machines and were happy to finally find a novel that featured one of their kind as the hero.
 
For $3.99, the reader gets 114 pages of dino lust. Or, if you should so choose, you can pick it up in paperback for $7.99.
 
In case you're wondering, I didn't pick it up but I did hope the subject matter would make for an amusing blog. G.W. told me I shouldn't bother. "Everybody knows about dinosaur erotica," she shared. "That's so two years ago."
 
That being the case, I'll see you next week. Bring some Kleenex.

​In Kansas City, a chill wind polishes the night until the sky seems to be an infinite slab of clear crystal in which stars are suspended and behind which is pent a vast reservoir of darkness.
 
So what do these two things have to do with one another? A glass rooster with an awkwardly placed spigot and a best-selling writer’s chapter opening?
 
Well, with the glass rooster, when the Good Witch saw it, she couldn’t stop laughing. “I want that rooster,” she said, until she noticed the $99 price tag (marked down, the store claimed, from $249). I kind of thought it might be a chicken, but I don't know my poultry. When I asked G.W. what she’d do with such a remarkable item, she told me, “I’d load that bird with lemonade, then watch people’s faces when they twisted the spigot to fill their plastic carry cups.”
 
Now I want one, too. Once it gets reduced to $19.99 – and it will get reduced to $19.99 – I can’t wait to show it to Glynn. Then I’ll fill it with lemonade and invite G.W. to the house for a barbeque.
 
Now about that best-selling writer….
 
I’m a big fan…or, maybe, I only used to be. His last book was a monster-sized volume that I picked up a few weeks ago. It might not have been his latest, last book but it was the most recent one I’d purchased. Okay, if you must know, I’d been waiting for the paperback to come out. (For those keeping store: Hardcover edition, $22.38. Digital, $9.99. Paperback, $7.49.) As budget-conscious as I am, I only made it through a quarter of the novel before I gave it away.
 
So what makes a cheapskate give away a paperback she’s been eager to read? A not very good novel. The book was long, nearly 600 pages, but I have no trouble with long. This is a woman who loved The Stand, v. 1 and, with version 1 still in the bookcase, picked up expanded v. 2.
 
The paperback had too many chapters for my liking but that’s become a thing that writers do, breaking long sections into short, ever since James Patterson decided a single page could count as a chapter. Or maybe it’s the editors or the publishers or the booksellers who are demanding more and MORE and MORE chapters per book to fulfill readers’ expectations. Kind of the literary equivalent of, “The food wasn’t very good and there wasn’t enough of it”, from what I can see. The words aren’t very interesting but, by gum, you’ll never be able to tell others that you didn’t get enough chapters!
 
Note to self: Add more chapters into next novel.
 
No, what I didn’t like was that not enough happened in too many pages. There was a great deal of description, pages of introspection, and segments where I thought my past fav was simply showing off. He could have written, “The wind was blowing and the skies were clear” but he was too much of a wordsmith for that. He needed to strut a little. He needed to show off. He did a wonderful job of it; I only wish I could write that well. But as a reader? I wanted my story to progress. I didn’t want to be distracted by blather (forgive me, past fav), I wanted to know what happened next.
 
At the 150 page mark, the story had barely begun – or, if there was hidden depths to what I’d read, I’d missed it. I was simply too disappointed to spend another 400 pages to get to the end of the tale so I gave the volume away.
 
Three days ago, I picked up one of his older books. It was published in 1993, was significantly shorter in page count than the latest stuff, and I had fond memories of it. I wanted to remember the “old” writer, the one I loved. This novel was divided into parts and chapters, and I enjoyed it once again. Not that the wordsmith wasn’t present, even then. Part One, Chapter Eight began, In Kansas City, a chill wind polishes the night until the sky seems to be an infinite slab of clear crystal in which stars are suspended and behind which is pent a vast reservoir of darkness.
 
For a sentence masquerading as a paragraph, not bad. The problem was, it took me out of the story. Like a glass rooster with an unfortunate spigot placement, it made me stop and admire what it’s maker had done, like it or not.
 
Or maybe that’s just me.
 
 
 
 

​If you’re asking yourself, I wonder if Peeps are good for me?, I refer you to the words of George Carlin: “You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet, eating a chocolate candy bar.”
 
That wasn’t the quote I intended to use, but it made me laugh so I left it in. When I finally found the words I thought I was looking for, I discovered I’d remembered them wrong, so that quotation won’t be making an appearance here, either.
 
But let’s take a moment to reflect on the original question. Are Peeps good for people? If you mean, “healthy”, nope, absolutely not. How could they be? Those adorable marshmallow beauties largely consist of a little food dye, a dab of gelatin, and sugar, sugar, sugar with sugar on top. They carry no nutritional value. This means if you have babies, and those babies come to you, wanting Peeps for supper instead of broccoli, you must tell them to eat their veggies. If they intend to indulge in sweets as their meal, they’ll have to wait until they get older.
 
I am older. Old enough, anyway, to go on the occasional candy binge.  Ryan Gosling said, “Sometimes I think that the one thing I love most about being an adult is the right to buy candy whenever and wherever I want”, and Ryan and I are on the same page with this. Glynn is, too, which is why we try to enjoy a package of Peeps every Easter.
 
This year, when we discovered three-packs of especially fancy Peeps at our local supermarket, we knew we had to take things further. We decided to have a Peep-Off. We’d never had one before, so we set some rules. We’d each indulge in one peep from every package, rate the candy on a 1 to 10 scale, compare notes, and share our opinions with the world.
 
Which is you. If the rest of the world has failed to stop by this blog to get the sugar lowdown, shame on them.
 
If you consider the above picture, you’ll see our contestants for the challenge. There was the (1) Vanilla Caramel Brownie Filled Delight; (2) the Strawberry Dipped in Decadent Cream-Flavored Fudge Delight; (3) the Cherry Limeade! Sour Cherry Dipped in Lime Fudge non-delight; (4) the Raspberry Dipped in Decadent Cream Flavored Fudge Delight; and (5) the Triple Chocolate Filled Delight.
 
We didn’t know why the Cherry Limeade Peeps received an exclamation mark -- ! -- instead of the Delight connotation, but we both felt it was an ill omen. We wondered if the Peeps legal team had refused to sign off on Delight-ing the Cherry Limeade! Peeps because they were so terrible.
 
When we tried the Cherry Limeade Peeps, what did we find? Not the worst Peeps of this bunch. The red and green color combination was cute, they smelled nicely lime-ish, and they tasted okay. They weren’t wonderfully yummy, but not yucky, either. We rated them a “6”, since I pegged them at a “5” and Glynn wanted a “7”.
 
The rest of the treats we scored the same.
 
The Strawberry Delights looked prettier in the package than they did on the plate. They had a strong but very artificial strawberry smell, and the strawberry/white fudge combo didn’t go together well. They were the least liked Peeps of the day, rating a “3”, which says something. Peeps should never be a “3”.
 
The Raspberry Delights? Not a true delight, but better than the Strawberry. The raspberry smell wasn’t as overwhelming, the color combination was interesting, but the fudge tasted a little off. We discovered, whenever there was white fudge at the bottom of a Peep, we were about to be disappointed. It always tasted nasty. The Raspberry was a “4” on both of our sheets.
 
I’d counted on the Triple Chocolate to be good, since chocolate is good all by itself so triple chocolate had to be amazing, and I was mostly right. The Peeps were very chocolatey and in the best way. A “9”. I’d be happy to find them in my Easter basket this Sunday.
 
I’d be even happier to discover the Vanilla Caramel Brownies in that basket, but I’d have to fight Glynn for them. These were some of the best Peeps either of us has ever enjoyed. There was just enough filling to make our tongues happy, and the combination was wonderful! A solid “10” from both of us, despite the fact that they were the least appealing visually. The marshmallow was very wrinkly: “old man” Peeps. We didn’t care the moment we popped them into our mouths.
 
The takeaway from all of this? Triple Chocolate and Vanilla Brownies: good, Raspberry and Strawberry: bad, and Cherry Limeade: eh. As they say in the advertisements, your results may vary. (I had to put that in for the sake of the Peeps lawyers, but it’s nonsense, really. Your results will be exactly the same as mine. Trust me. Have I ever lied to you about Peeps before?)

​Glynn recently began a correspondence with a fellow he met through one of his hobbies. The gentleman is older, accomplished in his field, and has six published novels currently available on Amazon. The two of them have been discussing writing (fun! Sometimes not!), reviews (fun! Sometimes not! Also, hard to get!) and the difficulties of actually getting the work out there and seen by the world.
 
A couple of days ago, his new friend wrote: Being an independent writer is a tough challenge. There are so many writers out there now it's really difficult to get the product into the hands of the readers. To be honest, I'm often amazed that anyone actually finds my works on Amazon and buys a copy. 
 
Glynn didn’t have to ask his friend what he did for a living. The gent is retired. If he had to make his living from the sale of his e-books, well, considering what he’s shared privately, it wouldn’t all be prime rib and macarOns, I’m telling you now.
 
I don’t know that it’s ever been easy to make a solid income as a freelance writer. In the days when self-publishing wasn’t a thing, we tried to make it happen for one full year. We sold a novel, almost sold another, found buyers for a dozen-plus nonfiction articles…and prayed the car wouldn’t break down, the roof wouldn’t leak, no surprise medical bills would appear, because we had exactly enough to get by and nothing more. Since all of our articles were “pay on publication”, there was never a guarantee that a check would arrive until it was in our hands. One of our pieces disappeared for nearly a year before its intended magazine went belly-up; rights issues kept us from recovering our work without hiring a lawyer.
 
When you’re wondering which bill to pay that week, you don’t bother contacting lawyers over a $300 fitness piece. It’s not worth their time. But, for us, that $300 would have made a difference at the time.
 
It was actually a relief when we decided it was time to get a day job. Glynn found a place that needed workers to build huge electrical box-thingies, while I started taking graphic design courses until I could land a graphic design job. The grind of barely-getting-by lessened, the car got repaired, we could afford to see a doctor if needed. We immediately stopped writing articles – we'd managed to sell every piece we wrote, minus the dead magazine, but the work was never a joy – and we concentrated on our fiction.
 
We love writing fiction. If a day job meant we could write what we wanted, we loved having a day job.
 
Can someone make it as a writer without a day job? People do it all the time. Our friend, Sue, the romance novelist, is doing it at this very moment. But most of the writers we know personally are like us or haven’t done quite as well as us, and we're not exactly soaring up the bestseller charts. Like Glynn’s buddy wrote, it’s a tough challenge.
 
When Glynn was a younger man, he corresponded with an up-and-coming writer who was on the verge of significant financial success. Unfortunately, his early minor successes never translated into a big-time career. The last time Glynn heard about him, his pen pal was still writing professionally, still fighting the traditional pub fight, and felt blessed to have a roof over his head. His cabin had no power, no water, but at least he had a home. We’ve recently met another writer, a columnist whose work I read and enjoyed a few years ago, who shared very openly that he was living below the poverty level. Part of that was was because he no longer had a steady gig. The in-between stuff no longer paid the rent.   
 
It can be a rough world out there. After a couple of years, Glynn quit building electrical box-thingies to enter the medical field. He’s enjoyed his career as a Registered Nurse. I continued working in graphic design and, these days, I do mostly freelance work. I also design book covers, including the ones on our books. One of my older covers is at the top of this blog. I'm not delighted that my new novel is coming along slowly, but contracted design work trumps writing on spec. With fiction, as Glynn's friend knows, you can never tell.
 
There’s nothin’ wrong with a day job.