Is anyone here having problems with Amazon or BN removing/prohiting their work. Amazon just refused to publish a very vanilla short story, I tried to publish. They said my work did not fit their guidelines or represent the image their company wants to present. (By the way it had nothing to do with monsters. It was about young man's psychological journey to the person, he felt she was meant to be.) It contained only musings/mild daydreams about sexual situations-no graphic descriptions. They referred me to the following article for an explanation of their position.

I know I promised many of you who have written that a new chapter Mother's Child was due out imminently. I'm sorry to say it's still not up!!!!! But it is nearly finished, and with veiled threat of tar and feathers being casually tossed around I am determined that it will be up, on or before next Monday.

I don't understand!

I don't understand why people feel the need to tell others how to live their lives. When you get right down to it that is what North Carolina DC 9 and similar laws are really about. I have a hard enough time trying to live my own life by my own ethical standards to spend time trying to tell someone else how to live theirs.

I don't understand hate. I've tried to hate various people and ideas, but it is too much work. It is much easier to love and tolerate, and I'm lazy.

Work on Mother's Child is proceeding slowly, unfortunately. I had surgery on my hand last week to stop progressive degeneration of the median nerve. This problem has for some months caused a near total loss of sensation in that hand and (contradictorily) excruciating pain in the thumb and forefinger. It has been getting progressively worse, and the orthopedic surgeon opined that I risked near total loss of use of this hand without the surgery, but this surgery has left me as a one-handed hunt-and-pick typist at best for the time being.

The next chapter of Mother's Child will be posted sometime tomorrow. I'm incorporating my editors' comments tonight, then one more look through it to make sure it's completely done and I will post it.

Waterdog

Is there any news on how Katie is doing? I haven't seen any updates in a while.

Waterdog

Didn't read today's blog entries close enough. Glad to here she's doing better.

Well I got some good news today. I don't have MS. A brain MRI scan came up clean. The bad news is I have virtually no vitamin D in my system (3 ng/ml - minimum needed to not be consider severely deficient is 30-60 ng/ml - depending on who you believe), the lack of which can mimic MS. I am now taking 5000 units of vitamin D a day. Doctor says it will take at least 3 months to get it up to where it needs to be. More bad news - They found that I also have severe multi-layer spinal arthritis, which is causing the weakness in my legs by abrading and compressing the sciatic nerve bundle.

I've had a rough week. I woke up Monday feeling poorly. Later that day, I fell down the steps to my apartment twice. My knees just turned to jello. My legs have been so weak that I couldn't stand up from a chair without using my arms. I'm stumbling on level ground. My mind feels like I'm drugged. My hands are shaking such that I can barely write this.

Yesterday, I saw the doctor who wants to test me for MS. I am going in for a brain MRI the 27th. Some Christmas present, eh!

I've had several inquiries about when the next chapter of Mother's Child will be available.

I'm working on it, but between helping my nephew move into his first home of his own, (Of course everything that could go wrong did. Ahh! the joys of home ownership!), the holidays, and a bad case of writer's block, it's been going slower than I had hoped. I'm shooting for late next week, but don't hold me to that.

Sorry,
Waterdog

Has anyone heard from Amethyst? She was having problems, then just disappeared from the site. I hope she is all right.

Waterdog

As much as it pains me to say this, I fear that future chapters of Mother's Child will be coming far less frequently or even regularly. When I started posting I was seven chapters ahead, having started writing this tale in January. Between the necessary re-edits, changes in story lines as things developed and other life issues, I have now caught up with myself. Chapter 10 only exists as a rough draft still in the process of re-writes, and future chapters are only concepts.