I need to do the tutorial. I did one character profile on it which I liked but then couldn't figure out how to do another one.

All of my notes/brainstorming is still done on legal pads longhand, but I can't write actual scenes that way anymore. My hands hurt if I try.

I would love to try Scrivener but I'm afraid it will become a time-waster where I'm testing bells and whistles instead of actually writing, which is something I would totally do.

I'm writing again. Things are coming to mind, and I can't rest till I get them down. In the midst of all the horror of this year, I don't know if getting the writing back is bitter irony or triumph.

Sentimental Holiday Story (a flash fiction)

Elijah tried to save humankind, coming as he always does, as a stranger seeking hospitality. He came as a Mexican refugee into the United States. But he was deported to Mexico, and turned over by local police to drug traffickers who killed him He returned again as a Sudanese refugee fleeing to Israel, but died in Helot of untreated diabetes.

Jesus came back to save humankind. He was born, as he always is, into a family of the poor. This time he was the son of a Detroit taxi driver. But 49 shots tore him apart as an infant when a policeman mistook his pacifier for an Uzi. Jesus came back again in Gaza as a baby girl. But an Israeli air strike upon the hospital where she was born ended her life when she was less than three hours old. ... Mohammed tried to return in Afghanistan. But a drone killed him along with his mother, and five brothers and sisters. Mohammed came back again in Pakistan, as a beloved daughter sent to a good local girls' school. But a bomb set by followers of the prophet who were too righteous to allow education of girls killed her and eight others children attending that school.

Krishna came back as a Muslim street urchin in Mumbai and then as a comic juggler and magician who poked fun at the Bharatiya Janata party. Both times he was torn to pieces by angry Hindu mobs.

Papa Legba was reborn in Haiti - not just inhabiting a follower, one of his horses, but in a proper body all his own. He was shot by UN monitors while leading a protest against the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas from yet another Haitian election. He tried again, but died of cholera shortly after a second rebirth.

Ahura Mazda was personified as an Iranian theoretical physicist, and assassinated by a joint CIA-Mossad operation on suspicion of working in Iran's nuclear program. He was personified again as a Yazidi and beheaded by ISIL for being a devil worshiper.

Buddha was assassinated by China after his rebirth in Tibet; he was killed again by an Indian paramilitary group as a suspected Maoist in Madhya.

Raven pulled his old, old trick of giving birth to himself. The ancient trickster became a wood carver in Seattle working on a set of sculptures whose powerful medicine would have changed the world once completed. But Raven was shot to death by a frightened Seattle policeman for possession of a whittling knife while Indian. He was killed again as an infant by an exploding oil train.

Saint Nicholas decided that, along with toys, he would bring the gift of world peace. A NORAD missile left nothing of him and his sled but the stench of burnt reindeer. Being only a demigod, he had no second chance.

Finally thousands of messiahs, all that had had ever been on earth, gathered in the asteroid belt. They grew tipsy on Ambrosia and Soma, and held a drunken council. For the sober council that followed nothing was served except the purest and most bitter drink - the tears of innocents. Both councils agreed; Earth was just too dangerous. "If the people of Earth want a Heaven," the Messiahs decided "let them build it themselves."

Now it is up to us, the people of this planet, to build our own Republic of Heaven. We live in too tough a neighborhood for any god, saint or demigod to risk entering.

Happy Holidays

Gar W. Lipow

Nice one, Gar!

Connie, good luck with your writing.

Am in revision dungeon. So ready to be out of revision dungeon.

Out of the revision dungeon! Draft clocked in at 101,652. We'll see how that stands after the next round.

Dreamed I wrote a brilliant satire that resulted in an angry mob with pitchfvorks, torches and uzis surrounding my home. Don't know how brilliant it is, but wrote down as much of it as I could remember. I may not complete it. This may be a bit too angry even for me. Think this is worth continuing or something best discarded?

Empires

Once upon a time a new continent suddenly rose off the east coast of a great empire After due consideration, the empire responded as it always did to anything new and strange it could not be absolutely sure was not a threat. It invaded.

The invaders found an unpopulated jungle, teeming with wildlife., Without a labor force to exploit, without valuable minerals, without even large trees or any other natural resources worth exploiting the empire did not really know what to do next. So its soldiers wandered aimlessly through the vast jungle, occasionally capturing and torturing spider monkeys, and sending drones in to destroy herds of wildebeests. There were no insurgents to provoke by these actions, so the invaders found themselves in the unfamiliar situation of not being locked into an escalating cycle of violence. Occasionally, though, a soldier or contractor would die or be injured through some accident. Then the empire's Air Force could firebomb a few acres of jungle around the accident site into desert. Oil companies would then, more or less in a reflexive reaction to sand, move into the newly created patch of desert and drill exploratory wells, though there was no particular reason to think any part of this conquest held fossil fuel reserves.

The animals were not quite like those of other lands; they observed and learned. In the face of the very real streak of timidity that lay behind the invaders' belligerence they tried silence. The lions no longer roared. The elephants no longer trumpeted. They even began to pass wind quietly. less the sudden explosion of a fart startle a news anchor or government official into launching a new war.

Finally, I can announce that I sold my flash piece "Sally the Psychic Alligator" to Fireside (which pays 12.5 cents a word!!!). This is my first magazine sale!

Congrats Polter!

Congratulations P-C!