Dear anyone,

If you see someone spreading images like this:

or this

They are  either deeply uneducated about the voting process or they are an asshole. 

You cannot vote with a hashtag. 

While you are worrying about whether beta readers will steal your ideas, there is a more genuine threat on the horizon.

When offered a publishing contract, please do all your research before you sign. There are a number of fakes and scammers out there, as well as good-intentioned amateurs that don’t know how to get your work to a wide audience. I won’t tell the heartbreaking stories here - there are too many.

Being published badly is worse than being never published.

It can destroy your career and your dreams.

The quick check is to google the publishing house name + scam or warning.

But, to be sure, check with these places first. They aren’t infallible (nothing is) but they can help you protect yourself. They are written and maintained by expereinced writers, editors, publishers and legal folks.

Absolute Write: Bewares and Background Checks

Preditors and editors

Writer Beware

and the WRITER BEWARE blog

Keep yourself and your work safe.

Equally important to know is that you can SELF-PUBLISH through a number of platforms these days. @ean-amhran and I used Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing to publish both of our books. No editors, no contracts, no finagling with publishers who want to change your materials. Just direct-to-market material.

(Granted, it means you’ve got to do a LOT more work yourself with editing and formatting and cover art, but it’s worth it to miss the headache of trying to bargain with publishing houses or avoid scams.)

Just saw a picture of a beautiful young mother holding her baby, and it set the sadness going all over again. We wanted this baby in our lives so badly. When we try again, will the next one miscarry, too? How can I even begin dealing with this heartbreak? I feel so much older since this started four days ago. I’m scared that I can never go back to being young again after this.

Take a journey into your imagination with me for a minute and imagine a world without the Catholic Church. As John Lennon sang, “imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion too“. Of course, with the recent news about how some politicians think faithful Catholics are just “backwards” and stuck in the middle ages, we may not have to work too hard to imagine this world.

What would it look like? How would we be structured? What would our culture be like?

Some might rejoice at this. In fact, this number is growing rapidly (see the link above). Some would mourn. Some would be indifferent.

Regardless of our initial reaction to this exercise, I think it is important to remind ourselves of what the Catholic Church has done.

Here are a few things that Church has given to the world:

The Bible

The University and the modern education system

The Big Bang theory

The Gregorian Calendar

Optics

Theory of Evolution

Modern development of:

Modern Astronomy

Some of the greatest artists, composers, and buildings ever

Many principles of law used in every government today

Many of the greatest books, plays, poems, etc

Non-profit hospitals for all

Easter / Christmas / Good Friday / etc

Prolife movement would virtually not exist

Upholds marriage & family by fighting divorce, abortion, contraception, infanticide, slavery, etc.

Monks helped preserve many great ancient documents we would not have without them

Brought Western civilization, morality, language, and religion to far-reaches of the world

Social Justice as a way of life

The Church educates 2.5 million children in the USA alone

Over 600,000 college students attend over 200 colleges in the USA

Genetics

Astronomy

Meteorology

Seismology

Electricity

Radioactivity

treat 1 in 5 patients in the USA

over 600 hosptials treat 84 million people annually

Largest supporters of AIDS and HIV treatment in the world

This is the short list. A fuller list can be found in the book “How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization” by Thomas Woods.

The Catholic Church is the backbone of Western Civilization. Without it, we will not be able to stand tall and be the leaders in the world. Run the Catholic Church out and our culture will quickly crumble. Catholics are also the heart of Western Civilization. Without the heart we lose so much of what makes us good.

Still, I have not even mentioned the most important thing the Catholic Church has done – it brings us God!

The Catholic Church incarnates God in the world. Through the members of the Catholic Church we are able to show others the face of Christ, the mercy of Christ. We are His hands, feet, and voice.

Through the Catholic Church we bring God into the world through the Sacraments.

Through the Catholic Church the Good News that Jesus saves us is given to the world.

The result of a world without the Catholic Church = A meaningless, sad, nihilistic world, because the Catholic Church is the only institution left in our Western Culture with the ability to stop the momentum toward moral and structural decay which has been driven into our culture by others. A momentum toward a post-theistic culture. A land where God is anathema and where vice is called virtue.

What would the world look like without the Catholic Church? Well, this explains it for me:

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” -Genesis 6:5-6

What other choice do we have but to pray and become holy? Only if the members of the Catholic Church rise up and live as we ought – as saints – can we hope for any change. The only hope is found in Christ, who can transform us and by transforming us – we can win our culture for Him.

“You cannot be half a saint; you must be a whole saint or no saint at all.” -St. Therese of Lisieux

“The saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church’s history.” -JPII

Evan McMullin remains optimistic in presidential bid — www.washingtontimes.com stories: Politics

Independent conservative presidential candidate Evan McMullin readily acknowledges he faces long odds in his long-shot White House bid that essentially counts on denying any one candidate 270 Electoral College votes and throwing things to the U.S. House at this point. But he said positive signs he’s seen since announcing past … via Evan McMullin remains optimistic in presidential bid —…

There are a lot of conspiracy theories, so I’m not sure what “the” theory is. But here’s mine.

I want to start with facts before I get into conjecture.

Here’s what we know about Trump and Clinton’s relationship prior to the election. We know that Trump and the Clintons have been friends and financial supporters of each other for decades. We know that Trump was a Democrat in the ‘90s. We know that Clinton and Trump have both used crony capitalism and corrupt government to get wealthy and powerful.

Here’s what we know about Clinton’s 2016 bid. We know the Democratic Party cut a deal with her in 2008- give the election to Obama and we’ll have your back in 2016. We know that the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schulz were conspiring against the Sanders campaign from the beginning- conspiring with the media against him, disenfranchising his likely voters in closed primary states, and having delegates and super-delegates pledged to her before the elections even happened. The Wikileaks emails that came out during the Democratic National Convention confirmed all of that and Schulz resigned because of it. We also know that the Democratic Party and CNN, MSNBC, AP, Google, and Facebook were all conspiring to keep Hillary’s scandals (emails, Benghazi, Bill’s sexual harassment, etc.) out of the press. And we know that Hillary and the Democratic Party had the press focus on Trump as the likely GOP nominee MONTHS before the primaries. And we know that the Wikileaks are seriously freaking Hillary out because she’s accused Russia of meddling with the election by exposing the leaks and she’s (possibly facetiously but no one who’s interacted with her in the last 3 decades has had good things to say about her humor) made comments about wanting to have Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, killed.

Here’s what we know about Trump’s 2016 bid. We know he had a conversation over the phone with Bill Clinton back in 2015 during which Bill encouraged him to run for president. We know that multiple Democratic voters switched to the Republican Party to vote for Trump in the primaries. We know that Trump was the only Republican candidate that the polls predicted would lose to Hillary in a general election. We know that many conservative Republicans have been skeptical about Trump’s positions and party loyalty to the point that many of them- Romney and the Bushes, for instance- refused to endorse him even after he won the nomination. We know that most of Trump’s base are unlikely voters who want a “political outsider”, the alt-Right who have been mortal enemies of the Republican base, and white nationalists (who only vote Republican because Republicans don’t believe in hate speech laws, hate crimes, or affirmative action), and celebrity voters (the same crowd who put Obama in office- I’ve actually talked to people who voted for Obama both elections are now are voting for Trump).

And I am 100% positive that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States and it is because Trump and not LITERALLY ANY OTHER REPUBLICAN is the nominee.

So if we know Hillary rigged the Democratic Primaries and we know she needed Trump to be the Republican nominee, and we know that Trump and Hillary have been mutually beneficial to each other in the past, and we know that Hillary would do anything to be president, and we know that Trump is egotistical enough to do anything to get his name in the media every single day, why wouldn’t they conspire to rig a Presidential election for the most powerful country in the world?

Skreem, haunt pokemon, Ghost

Though they are not uncommon and prefer to make homes inside human houses, Skreem are rarely seen. They can remain undetected in an attic or basement for years due to the fact that they make absolutely no noise unless disturbed.

evolves via level up

Skreech, haunt pokemon, Ghost

Unlike their previous form, Skreech are near constantly wailing, moaning, and flailing about. Homes inhabited by a Skreech are often mistaken for haunted, as this pokemon still prefers to remain out of sight

evolves via trade, the two drawings aren’t “alternate forms” or anything fancy, just how they look at rest vs. when they scream

Shreek, banshee pokemon, Ghost

me: