James Pyles's Blog, page 104

The Burning Woman

Okay, last one for today. The images are pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain anyway. The one at the very top was taken of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer leaving the White House after a recent meeting with President Donald Trump. According to various sources including The New York Times, Pelosi pretty much “owned” Trump in […]

The Time Travel Game

I’m putting this here mainly to keep track of it. I like the idea of time travel as a game, maybe like a scavenger hunt, but I’ve got too many other projects going to sufficiently develop this one now. When I was a kid, I loved all of those Irwin Allen television shows such as […]

The Return of Uncle Martin

“Chris, what’s going on?” Susan O’Hara stood at the storage shed watching her husband tap at the laptop keyboard, attached to a rough, plaster globe wrapped in wire. “Tracking his spacecraft. Dad said he’d come back. Found the diagrams and the frequency in his papers.” “Your Dad was crazy. He thought his uncle was a […]

Summer Reflection

Twenty-nine year old Melanie Snyder stood sobbing at the shore of the lake where her Grandpa’s ashes had been scattered two years ago. She purposely had one hand inside her coat touching something precious she was wearing around her neck. The first rays of the April sun were just now creeping over the eastern horizon […]

Quoting: Learn From Your Role Models

When your first reaction is not to take the action that you really want to do, ask yourself, “Who do I know has a positive attitude about taking action? Now let me borrow his mind, as it were. Let me borrow his brain in my own unique way.” Make yourself feel the way you imagine […]

Quoting: Recall Your Own Moments of Zrizus

We all have experienced zrizus and moments of joyful willpower. That is, we did things swiftly and right away. There are many instances when we felt motivated to do something positive that we strongly wanted to do and felt good about actually doing them. When you recall a moment of zrizus and joyful willpower, you […]

Escaping Paradise

“Are you sure this is the right move?” Sixteen-year-old Erin leaned forward against her seatbelt so her Dad, who was driving, could hear her. “It’s too late to ask now. All our stuff’s moved to the new place in Glenbrook, the house in San Francisco finally sold, so Nevada is our new home.” He chuckled […]

Quoting: Ambition Takes You Far

Ambition can be powerful. Ambition helps a person mobilize his resources. Ambition enables someone to face challenges and persist. Ambition prevents a person from giving up. A person with a high degree of ambition will be able to accomplish much more than someone with similar intelligence and skills but without ambition. Ambition enables a person […]

Book Review: Chill (Jacob’s Ladder Book 2)

Today, I finished the science fiction novel Chill by Hugo and Sturgeon award-winning author Elizabeth Bear. Unfortunately, when I checked it out of my local public library, I didn’t notice that it was the second installment in the three-part Jacob’s Ladder series. The series tells the tale of a generation ship, a proposed means of […]

The Chiromancer

For the first time in her career, petite, forty-five year old Sheryl Valdez regretted being a chiromancer. Like the Prophet Joseph from the Bible, she had correctly interpreted a person’s future, but instead of being made a dominant ruler, she was on the run, at the moment, trying to blend in with the other evening […]