Meanwhile… #4: Between the Lines

• General News:Not terribly much – but as the old saying goes “no news is good news” – especially while the entire world is in the middle of rearranging itself politically, culturally and normatively. The good news, at least as far as I’m concerned, is that I’m still alive and living better off, and with far more freedom and prospects of survival and prosperity than I would be in the former United States of America. I’ve never been more relieved to not have emigrated from South Africa in my entire life than in the past several months since Trump’s second election. Holy fuck! Anyway, if you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community over there, please heed my warnings and get the fuck outta Dodge. I hear Canada is nice this time of year. Or, well, any time of the year – especially during the USA’s Nazi season. You can always go back later, once all the dust has settled and they’ve removed the Nazi shit-stains out of the White House carpets.With the takeover staged by the US neo-Nazi party, the looming abolition of the Dept of Education, it seems the number of books banned in the USA now exceeds 10,000 titles, mostly classics and mostly books addressing or describing human rights abuses such as slavery, civil rights movements and fascism. Also, as the rainbow flag is now banned at any government building, including schools, they can now legally be replaced with Confederate or Nazi flags – I shit you not. Can’t say I’m the least bit surprised there, but perhaps just at the sheer brazeness of it all – and how so many Americans appear to be taking all of this seemingly lying down. I only wonder how long it will be before the Trump-edition “Bible” and “Mein Kampf” become required reading in US schools (if they continue to exist)? Anyway, on that chillingly dystopian note, let’s look at some more stuff.
• Current Writing Projects: I’m still busy on the first part of “Flushed” (book 5 in Panic! Horror In Space), as well as “A Nine In Time” (book 10 in Quantum), but I’ll keep you updated as time goes by. In the meantime you can keep up by bookmarking What’s Brewing? During the last week, I also wrote a few advocacy related articles on my old activism blog “Sour Grapes: The Fruit Of Ignorance“: “Crying Wolf: The Genocide That Just Isn’t” and “What Is Going On In Germany?“.
• Book Availability:ÂContinuing last week’s explanation of trying to find new platforms for my books, Italian platform StreetLib has fallen even further since I left them back in 2022. Now they’re a paid platform, with a much-reduced free package, with a limit to how many books you can upload, and limits to file size etc. To make matters even worse, their eBook publishing wizard – for lack of a better description, is completely hopeless and frustrating to use, and I couldn’t work out how to publish a single thing using it. I deleted my account yet again after just spending an hour there – time I’ll never get back – trying to figure that shit out. On to the next one I guess.

As always, I’ll keep you posted about any new developments – but bear in mind it won’t be on a regular schedule anymore, but as and when I have something to communicate. So until then, I wish you Auf Wiedersehen and all the best!

Remember, keep reading!

Cheers!

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