A haven for creative people living with mental illness. This is the place where you can tell it like it is, not yet another place where you have to pretend to be someone you've been told you should be.
Friday, July 29, 2022
Friday Book Hop 29 July 2022
Friday, July 15, 2022
Friday Book Hop 15 July 2022
Buy link:
I will earn a small commission from Amazon for any books purchased via this link.
“The study of psychological trauma has an ‘underground’ history. Like traumatized people, we have been cut off from the knowledge of our past. Like traumatized people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and future. Therefore, an understanding of psychological trauma begins with rediscovering history.”1
The author chose this quote from Judith Lewis Herman to begin her book. Considering the subject matter, it works perfectly.
1 Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015), 2.
“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Laura selected this quote to begin Chapter 17. I would argue that there is also strength in knowing when to back off, to re-evaluate, to rest. I was one of those people who went to work deathly ill on more than one occasion. I always ignored health problems until they became critical. At nearly 60 years old, I am now learning to do certain things I should have been doing all along for my well-being.
Until next time!
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Make it Happen Thursday: Organizized
Writing Schedule for July 2022
Sunday Selections (Photography)/Poetry Sunday
(Finish and send off entries for Lincoln Poetry Contest)
Mental Health Monday (Encouragement Project)
Tasty Tuesday (Cooking with Ornery Owl), Watkins promotion
WIP Wednesday (Naughty Netherworld Press stories)
Work on editing/formatting The Wizard's Key
Make It Happen Thursday/Blog Hop Thursday/Wordy Thursday (Weekly roundup, editing, reviews)
Make blog posts for the month.
Seek My Fortune Friday (Work on stories for publication elsewhere)/Fanfiction Friday
For July: The First Line autumn entry (Lily)
The First Line Nonfiction: Write a 500 – 800 word essay about the first line from a favorite literary work.
Blog hops: First Line Friday/Friday 56
Not sure I'm going to bother with the fiction entry for The First Line. They've rejected both of my previous fiction submissions. I'm getting this hunch that I'm not their cup of tea.
Sexy Saturday (Erotica stories)/Shameless Self-Promo Saturday
For July: Naughty November story for Cobblestone Press
Do Triberr tweet queue
Specific Events
Release the Beast July 15
Send out the newsletter.
And now, it's question time.
What would I really like to be working on?
All Tales from the Dreamlands/Cthulhu Mythos/Fetchiverse all the time.
But, guess what.
That’s not commercially viable.
I really want to go out and kill everyone who has it all together and put their heads on posts in front of my house to warn all those other well-organized and successful jerkfaces to beware.
Before anyone thinks they have to call the police or animal control to restrain an ax-murdering round owl, slow your roll. I am being hyperbolic. I’m not actually a murderous psychopath, plus I'm too lazy to bother hunting people down and killing them. I’m just aggravated because it seems that all I ever do is struggle while some people have wonderful things throwing themselves at their feet.
Ah well, on we go.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Insecure Writers Support Group 6 July 2022
If you could live in any book world, which one would you choose?
The Harry Potter universe is less horrible than some, but it would only be fun if one was a wizard. With my luck, I'd be a muggle or a house elf. Anyway, it's not all fun and games, what with death stalkers and Him Who Must Not Be Named and all that sort of thing.
At my age, I'd have to be a professor, I suppose.
I'm old, tired, and grouchy. I'd be Snape, but with gray hair and saggy boobs.
Then again, the Owl thing does come naturally. I'd be Hedwig, but ornery.
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Hope. Dreams. Life... Love: Saturday Sample and Weekend Writing Warriors
Monday, July 4, 2022
Aurora Springer: A wild look - excerpt from Stung by the Cobra for ...
Friday, July 1, 2022
Freedom Friday: All the Animals
My late father had a saying.
"We're off like a herd of turtles!"
Then there's the old saying, "slow and steady wins the race."
I ain't so sure about that one at this stage of the game. It seems to me if I'm going to get a win, I kind of need to get it sooner rather than later.
Today's Thera-Pets card was a nice otter with the following message:
Don't focus on success or failure.
Just focus on your effort.
Focus on trying.
To purchase the Thera-Pets deck by Kate Allan, follow the link.
Kate has another one that I like. She shared this one online. I had it displayed on my old Horror Harridans Writing Sisterhood blog. The blog still exists as an archive, but I had to stop posting there because the only comments I ever got were from bots.
This is the attitude that I need to remember.
I got trolled yesterday by some sick fuck after sharing a link to an article about the Emmett Till case. The woman whose accusations led to the then fourteen-year-old Till's brutal murder may finally be tried for her role in the crime. It's a damn shame that her piece of shit husband and his piece of shit half-brother will never do any time for their direct role in the killing. Both of them are dead. They even confessed to a Look Magazine reporter that they had committed the murder, but thanks to double jeopardy laws, they couldn't be retried. If that ain't a steaming pile of shit, I don't know what is.
Anyway, I and others who shared the article got tagged in a post that contained the phrase "kill n****rs" copy-pasted repeatedly. I know, that's some real jeenyus right there. How can anyone hope to compete with that level of brilliance? I reported and blocked the shithead, obviously. However, I was left unsettled. It reminded me of being cyber-stalked back in the early 2000s.
I wasn't worried that the guy doing the cyberstalking was going to be able to physically harm me. He was in India. He wasn't rich, just some dumb fuck with several screws loose. He probably couldn't have even gotten a visa to travel to the US. His harassment was all online. He knew I was a sexual assault survivor and he would leave comments like, "We want you. We think you're sexy."
Yeah, I know, referring to himself in the plural is not exactly an indicator of solid mental fortitude. It was still unsettling.
This dogshit for brains ass clown would also needle me about the fact that my posts never got many comments.
I tried to block him, but Blogger's blocking function is seriously half-assed. I used another blocking app for a while, but this is how deranged this guy was. He let it slip that he would get around the blocking app by going to different cyber cafes. There are a metric ass-ton of cybercafes in Mumbai. I shut down my original blog because dealing with him was so odious.
So, for those who think I should turn off comment monitoring and allow anonymous comments, the response is not only no but hell no.
The dumb piece of shit from yesterday is not going to bother cyberstalking me. He was a hit-and-run troll. Still, it reminded me of my cyber stalker from the early 2000s, and that was not a fun stroll down Memory Lane. Most of my memories aren't, and that's why I'm in the state I'm in.
~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~




















