Molly Burkhart's Blog, page 2

Contest Winner!

And the winner of the harem job contest is… Shelby Rollins! She’ll receive a signed copy of Lone Wolf Mates soon!

She suggested a space gardener, which really is the most important part of any space crew. You may or may not need to fight. You may or may not need a navigator.

You WILL need to eat!

Check in again for more contests and fun. I’m currently preparing for the Literary Love Savannah writer conference in July, but writing every day!

Find Lone Wolf Mates here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B44Y2Y5R/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_QTGYGNS4HHW2GFHKCMW3

Latest Release Fun!

In honor of my latest release, Lone Wolf Mates, I’m holding a little conversation. A contest, really.

Oh, hell. A free signed paperback to whoever gives the most creative, fun answer. If there are too many fun ones, I’ll just draw a random number for the winner.

So, what’s the game? I’ve written a lot of different jobs for my harem guys. Bounty hunters, private eyes, photographers, even a conservation agent. I have a space RH where all the guys hold on-ship positions like engineer and navigator and pilot, etc. I love it when the guys have a job and then BOOM… they have a woman that puts that job second place.

I have an upcoming fic where the guys are an FBI agent, a CIA agent, and an ATF agent. I can’t wait for that one. It’s about a water goddess, and there will be so many “Stop, please, that sound makes me have to pee!” jokes, because I am a child and easily amused.

So what’s your favorite job idea for harem members? I want space port janitors. I want middle management gods-in-hiding. I want mutant Congresspeople–

Er… okay, that one was already done back in an old X-Men movie. But you get the idea. Reply with your favorite RH jobs that get sidetracked for the lady fair, and one of you will win a signed copy of Lone Wolf Mates!

Hit me with your best shot!

Odds and Ends

Thanks to help from my beloved sister, Joely Sue Burkhart, I managed to get a Coming Soon page going. Woo-hoo! That feels a little better.

I love my tree, the colors are nice, and I’m able to update pages as I need to, I think. Website is officially updated. You guys can see what I’m up to, and I can push out updates and post snippets, and we’re all good!

What I’m mostly focused on right now is LLS, a writer’s conference in Savannah, Georgia. This will be the first conference I attend as a writer, and I’m SO excited! I can’t wait to see how much fun we have there! I’m a little nervous, but I’ve been to one con as a reader, so I’m hoping it won’t be all that different. Joely and I will be doing several things together, and I have one event, the Book Tea, that I’ll be doing on my own.

And the big Saturday book sales and signings! Eeeee! Meets and greets galore!

Maybe some of you will be there? Or maybe next year!

That’s a little better…

It’s prettier, anyway, and has all my latest books in the bookshelf. I’m still tinkering with what sorts of pages I need to add. I’m thinking of adding one for each book so you can click to the blurb and maybe a snippet, something like that.

As you can tell, I’m learning on the fly. Web design is so not my thing! I can’t get a page layout that I like for a “coming soon” page, so I think I’ll just title any blog posts where I talk about upcoming projects as COMING SOON. I’ll just need to be consistent, heh.

Until then, I’ll try to do updates and treat this section like a blog. Snippets of current works, speculation on future projects, moaning about the writing, all that sort of thing. Deal? Deal!

Under Construction

Hello all! Given that my bookshelf is expanding, I’ve decided to update my website to keep up with the times. Thus, it’ll be a little rough around here until I get things in order.

Bless this mess?

I’m the mess. The mess is me. Bear with me!

Dear Charlie:

Sorry. I've spent the past couple of weeks just trying to tread water, like everyone else. There's too much happening at the same time hitting us from all sides.
President Obama and the US Army Corps of Engineers denied Dakota Access's permits and refused to grant the easement for the pipeline. On the surface, that looks like an amazing development, and it is. That said, DA has already suggested they'll build there anyway and just pay the fines.
A few hundred miles away, a pipeline leak of unknown duration -- ie., they dunno how long it's been leaking -- has been dumping crude into people's drinking water. Which is why Standing Rock and all their allies were fighting. Because those happen. A LOT.
Flint, Michigan, finally has a glimmer of hope. $170 million has been approved to clean out and fix their water supply. I will refrain from shouting "it's about goddamn time" from the rooftops. Unfortunately, I don't see anything saying when that will start, and as of right now, they're still living out of plastic bottles and unable to so much as wash their hands with the local water supply. Who knows how much permanent damage was done to how many people?
Trumperdink has continued to appoint irredeemable assholes to his cabinet. I can't even begin to list the reasons they are all the worst people. The list grows every day.
People who really should know better are still denying climate change, leading to lots of talk about pulling out of the Paris agreement. The fossil fuel industry is trying to keep its filthy lucre rolling in while Elon Musk and Tesla and individual scientists and developers all over the world remind people that clean energy tech is right here waiting for everyone to get their heads out of their wallets.
Entire islands can be powered by the sun and wind. They can make solar panels clear now, so entire buildings can become giant batteries without either confusing the local birds (who sometimes think big panel displays are ponds or lakes) or blinding air traffic (because the dark solar panels are kinda like big mirrors from a certain angle).
But no. We totally shouldn't do that because climate change isn't a real thing, and there's money to be made in pollution and ever-increasing consumption of dwindling resources. And fracking! Because who cares if it pollutes ground water!
A conspiracy theorist's worst fever dream has happened, too: Russia deliberately and effectively swayed this travesty of an election, and Putin had a direct hand in it. Cries for the popular vote -- which HRC won by nearly three million votes and still counting, what with the recounts showing so many irregularities despite opposition to the recounts -- to be upheld increase and Trumperdink supporters are already whinging about buyer's remorse because he's happily crapping all over whatever bullshit campaign promise he made them and proving that, as we tried to tell them, he doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
I don't feel even a little sorry for them. They were warned.
I deeply pity and pray for the innocent people who are already suffering and who will continue to suffer. Who voted and were denied or who were unable to vote because of bullshit "voter fraud" restrictions designed to deny them their right to a political voice.
Aleppo. I just... how can we even hope to help them when the bastard ordering their cold-blooded murder just installed an easily-led, spoiled, tiny-fingered bully as our freakin president? They are dying, pleading for their lives, for help, for escape, and our wheezing, orange, sack-of-shit, would-be despot is too busy skipping intelligence briefings to have conflict-of-interest parties at his goddamn hotels to care.
And the electoral college votes today. Petitions to halt the final vote until the electors can be briefed on Russia's interference and all the count irregularities already discovered in the few states we could get to recount seem to have been useless. As was the popular vote. As, apparently, is any attempt to turn this particular blood tide.
So yeah. I've been treading water. Hoping for anything to stop this from happening. Hoping that each new travesty, each new miscarriage of the constitution, each new and obvious conflict of interest would be the thing to keep that buffoon out of office or, worse, installing him just to impeach him and leave his much-more-dangerous VP in charge. Because as bad as Trumperdink is, at least he's an easily-led idiot who's incapable of paying attention long enough to pick a method of destruction and stick with it.
Forget the Lady or the Tiger. If the electors vote as their bullshit, gerrymandered divisions say they have to, our choices are the belt-fed mini-gun with no safety and a hair trigger... or a volley of laser-targeted so-called Patriot missiles.
So, what'll it be, America?
Where do we even go from here?

Dear Charlie:

First and foremost, I'd just like to take a moment to thank Cary Elwes for tagging He Who Doesn't Deserve to Be Named with the absolute best nickname in history. 
Mr. Elwes, you might recall, is the gent who played Westley in The Princess Bride. His main adversary was Prince Humperdink, a "coward with a heart full of fear" and "the slimiest weakling ever to crawl the earth" who paid a group of thug assassins to kidnap his lovely never-really-meant-to-be-a-bride and kill her so he could start a war with a neighboring country.
Thus, it was perhaps fitting that thirty years later, it's Sweet Westley who just named the cowardly and foolish president elect... Trumperdink.
It so fits. And his running mate, Pimple, definitely gives off a Count Rugen vibe, what with that torture kink of his. 
Speaking of Trumperdink and his loyalish attack dog, everyone and their (racist, bigoted) grandma heard about the Hamilton kerfuffle this weekend. And everyone was supposed to hear about it. Trumperdink made sure of it. Though I refuse to link to his Twitter feed where he made a mockery of himself and his baby-thin skin yet again.
Why, do you ask? Why make such a big fuss about a tempest in a teapot at a play the average schmuck can't afford to attend and is sold out until 2018, anyway? And that I doubt Count Pimple cared even half a shit about because he doesn't strike me as man who minds being boo-ed, considering how much his own state hates him? 
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Subterfuge. Camouflage. A smoke screen.
It's a distraction from the fact that Trumperdink settled his bullshit university fraud case. The "I don't settle" guy settled yet another case, admitting to committing fraud to keep the case from going any further and having to answer any uncomfortable questions or produce any embarrassing documents.

So he sent his six-fingered wingman to a play about early American politics put on by an amazing and diverse cast and let the real play begin.
But here's the thing: if this wasn't just a "nothing wrong here; look over there!" diversionary tactic, it would actually be pretty important. Trumperdink is, of course, a moron for ever thinking theatre was a "safe place". Never mind that a politician could be so thin-skinned as to let a little crowd-booing destroy their fragile self esteem (please refer back to that "heart full of fear" and "slimiest weakling" commentary earlier).
Theatre has always been the place where humans can battle the gods and win, where a commoner can thumb his nose at a king. Theatre -- and the arts in general -- has always given powerful voice to the powerless.
That's why it's one of the first things would-be tyrants go after. They want to silence detractors, limit freedom of speech, limit the flow of ideas and knowledge to what they want you to know, and nothing else.
So yes, it's a smokescreen to cover up the fraud thing, but it's still pretty damn disturbing. As is the ridiculous "boycott Hamilton" nonsense of people arguing that they should be able to go see a play without being bothered by politics.
What the hell do they think Hamilton is about??
It's just an all-around fuckarow, and I could almost laugh at the ridiculousness if it didn't signal deeper problems. Like how willing everyone is to jump on something so stupid just to not have to face the fact that the president elect just admitted to fraud just to make the case go away before he's sworn in. Or that he still has 74 open cases against him, including sexual harassment. 
Or that he's so financially compromised in every direction that I can't even list/link them all because we may never know all of them because he still won't release his tax records.
Ugh. I just can't.
This is where we are right now, folks. Forget that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 1.7 million votes and counting. It's always been long odds for enough electorates to flip to elect her instead of Trumperdink.
All we can do is keep pointing out the utter unsuitability of this giant orange buffoon for anything resembling public service. Point it out to our senators and representatives and party leadership and even our state and local politicians and ask them to stand up for us against him and his parade of hate-mongers. Point it out loudly and often.
I honestly don't know what the procedure would be if we managed to get him ousted due to all his unconstitutional financial conflicts of interest. Would Congress have to accept Clinton by default, since she was the only other real candidate and did win the popular vote? Would they swear in Count Pimple instead, God help us please no?
Would there be some other option? I honestly don't know the constitutional provision for a somewhat elected candidate being proven unfit for office before the swearing in. If anyone knows, please please tell us.
We need some hope.

Dear Charlie:

"Now that Cheeto Voldemort is elected, we have to respect him and give him a chance."

No. No, we don't.

Why do people not remember that the president -- in fact, any elected official -- works for us, not the other way around? He should respect us.

But he doesn't. Why should he? He walked onto the national stage and put on a divisive, fear-mongering, racist, misogynist, bigoted, hate-fueled dog-and-pony show, and it worked. They elected him for it. Why should he respect the sheep he so easily led into his personal holding pen?

Well, I'm not in his holding pen. I didn't vote for him, and he hasn't overthrown the First Amendment quite yet.

The vast majority of his campaign promises were unconstitutional. The vast majority of his plan for the first hundred days is unconstitutional. His vow to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and the like has led to him picking up staffers so foul the swamp kicked them out.

A vice president who jailed a woman for miscarrying and advocates for parents to be allowed to force conversion therapy on their LGBTQ children. Climate change deniers. An attorney general candidate who was denied federal judgeship for being a racist. A blatant and unapologetic anti-Semite and white supremacist who, just to check off all the asshole boxes, is also anti-Muslim and anti-immigration (I refuse to link to any Breitbart article).

Lots of anti-immigration folk on the list, actually. This is not my shocked face.

And I'm not terribly surprised at the climate change deniers, considering the angry orange turnip thinks coal is a clean energy source. Because he's clearly never seen a picture of nineteenth century London.

Oh, and speaking of his complete lack of give-a-fuck for the environment, did I mention his significant monetary interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline? Because he totally has a vested interest in finishing that construction and damn the protests and the clear and present threat to the Native American way of life there and the likely environmental impact of an almost inevitable pipeline leak.

Here's the skinny there: Dakota Access is a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners. The CEO of ETP donated $103,000 to Turnip's campaign, which is already beyond questionable, but that's just the first layer of corruption. See, according to financial records, Ol' Turnip has invested between $500,000 and a million dollars in ETP.

And that's not all! He also invested another similar amount in Phillips 66, which... of course... holds a 25% share of a finished Dakota Access Pipeline.

Gee, is it any wonder that one of Troutface's first orders of business will be attempting to lift President Obama's ban on construction of the pipeline pending a more complete investigation of its ramifications? No. It isn't.

This is what we're dealing with, people. He isn't even in office yet, and we're already organizing calling campaigns just to effectively protest all of his shitty policies and appointments to our Congresspeople because there are so many that we might forget some of them otherwise.

As John Oliver says, this is not normal.

So no. Just because he backdoor won an election he had no intention of playing all the way through doesn't mean he gets automatic respect from the people he's fully intending to screw over. If he can pull off even half of his promises -- doubtful, which is the only bright spot on this abyssal trench of bullshit -- we will be decades, generations trying to right the damage.

So no. No unearned respect.

We're also not going to give him a chance. He's already throwing the safety and futures of the vast majority of Americans out the window in favor of pursuing his own monetary interests and bigoted ideologies. We cannot allow him to undo a hundred years of civil liberties progress and environmental protection or succumb to his xenophobic paranoia and hatred.

He went out and bought himself an election. What he is only starting to understand is that he lied and pontificated his way into a public service position, and he now serves us.

And we're gonna by God make him serve us. Whether he likes it or not.

Because that's the job he bought. The dumbass.

Dear Charlie:

Well, it's been a year since I posted here. The last post was something I felt very keenly -- my 12-year-old niece receiving a dick pic and a carnival of adults and loved ones (myself included) not being able to do a damn thing to stop or even call out the offender -- so I wanted to leave it up for a while to make sure the point carried.

Now, well... let's just say I feel a lot of things very keenly right now.

I'm tempted to delete all prior posts except the last one and start over. You can see that I've cleaned up my sidebar and cut down my profile to the bare minimum. No cutesy stuff. No tongue-in-cheek.

I don't feel very tongue-in-cheek lately. We have some real problems here in the States and around the world, and while I usually use humor and sarcasm to deflect argument and strong emotions so everyone around me has as good a time as possible, I don't think now is the time or silliness.

So, I think this blog will be, at least for now, repurposed. Instead of writing about random stuff happening in my life, I think I'll try to corral some of my thoughts on what's happening and what I/we can do to protect the people who will be most negatively impacted by the ignorance and anger that allowed the current status quo.

Think of this reboot as part journal, part call to action (for me), and part meta on the real world. I doubt anyone will be reading this (except my beloved sister), and those who do probably won't take it seriously. And that's okay. It's for me, not the rest of this country and certainly not the rest of the world. Everyone will have their own strategy to get through.

I just... I'm a writer, okay? I think better in prose. So, I'm going to keep using this blog I've had since 2004, and I guess I won't delete all those prior posts just yet, but I've changed and grown a bit since then. I think we all have.

And I still hope we can all change for the better.

So, while I will indeed watch He Who Shan't Be Named Because His Hands Are Too Tiny crash and burn over and over and over for the next four years, I also want to do what I can to protect those far more vulnerable than I am. People of color. Immigrants. Other women. LGBTQ folk. People of other religions.

I mean, c'mon. This country was supposedly founded on religious freedom, right? Sheesh.

Anyway, once we've done everything we can to ensure our friends and allies are as safe as possible, we can all sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch Cheeto Voldemort self-destruct in slow motion. It will be glorious.

But not at the expense of people's lives and safety.

Thus, I will be writing plenty of letters and making plenty of phone calls to my representatives. And while I am routinely broke, I will be donating when I can to such groups as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the TREVOR Project, etc., and when able, donating in the names of the various bigots Dingleberry Troutface keeps appointing.

They'll get thank you cards. From charities and organizations they hate.

It's win/win, really.

As a great man once said, "I aim to misbehave."

Let it begin.

A Call to Action:

My niece is twelve years old, and she just got her first dick pic.

This experience has been a lot of firsts for her, actually. Her first realization that her cell phone can be a source of nasty surprises as well as nice ones. Her first realization that she has no control over what literally anyone can send her. Her first encounter with the "bros before hos" mentality when her friend, a boy, immediately turned on her when it briefly appeared the dick-piccer might get in trouble.

Her first realization that her school, where she previously felt safe, will not (or in this case, cannot) protect her from harassment.

Her first realization that almost no one in authority will believe her if she reports harassment. Her first understanding that "boys will be boys" is a rationalization she will have to live with the rest of her life.

Her first realization that a boy texting another boy that he wants to grab her by the ponytail and hump her doesn't count as a threat because it wasn't sent directly to her. That if the boy, whose locker is right above hers, has touched her inappropriately or straddled her as she crouched to get into her locker or grabbed her from behind and pressed against her as she stood up doesn't count if no witnesses will admit to seeing it.

That her locker will be moved when it's reported, as if she's the problem, instead of the boy having to move and thus be outed as the offender. As if she's a temptation, and scooting her ten feet down the row will temper his "natural" urges.

She's not a temptation. She's a twelve-year-old.

She now knows that if the boy sends the picture from a different Google group number than his usual one (do you see the budding sexual predator tendency here? because Google accounts can have several numbers to choose from, and Google will not release information on those other numbers without a subpoena) it obviously just appeared by magic in her phone and wasn't sent by anyone. That if it's snapchatted or otherwise non-text messaged to her and is already gone, she has no proof that it ever happened at all, no matter that it's seared into her brain. That without the picture, we can't get a subpoena for the sender's account details to prove who sent it.

She's twelve years old. I feel like that bears repeating. She deleted the picture so fast (once she realized what it was, because she didn't even know at first) that she has no idea how it was sent, which is making recovery of it complicated (even with police involvement). But how could she know? She just wanted it gone.

Well, I suppose school, where the most tangible incidences of physical harassment took place, is a place for learning, right? Because she's certainly getting a lesson right now. Unfortunately, the lesson is that no one can protect her. And some authority figures won't even try.

This is a lesson her older sister already learned. Starting in middle school, a boy in her band class started making inappropriate comments. Then he started sitting a little too close or standing right up against her. This continued for over a year. Finally, when she was fifteen, this fledgling sexual predator maneuvered her into an area of the school where the cameras don't reach and crowded up against her, making all sorts of inappropriate comments while pressing her into the wall.

She told her mother (my sister). Her mother called the school. The assistant principal -- male, of course -- said, and I quote, "Boys will be boys."

So my sister CC'd her reply to the band director and other school officials, including that laughably antiquated line, and said the next time he called her daughter in to be "apologized to" by the boy that cornered and borderline assaulted her, she demanded to be informed of the meeting so she could be present to hear exactly what he was telling her fifteen-year-old daughter about how boys should behave toward girls.

His response was to quickly backpedal and blame the situation on autism. The boy didn't understand her confusing social cues. Because "leave me alone" is confusing in any way.

I'm sorry, Mr. Assistant Principal, but that is not autistic behavior. Deliberately learning where the cameras don't reach and maneuvering a girl he's already been harassing for over a year into that area to molest her further is sexual predator behavior. That is not on the spectrum.

But no matter. The situation somehow magically disappeared before anything further could be done. Because that's what happens when girls are harassed. It just... goes away.

Because here we are again. This situation escalated much more quickly, but it still ended in the same place -- a young girl being violated by a boy at school, and the school ignoring it as "boys will be boys" until it escalated to the point of police involvement.

No.

Boys will not be boys. Boys will be human beings who respect other human beings. Boys will be people who don't violate other people. Boys will be held accountable for their actions toward others.

I'm speaking directly to you here, boys. Unless someone specifically says, "I would like to see a picture of your dick", DO NOT SEND A PICTURE OF YOUR DICK . It really is that simple. Anything else is, by definition, sexual harassment, and we have to stop tolerating it.

We have to stop ignoring the victim. We have to stop blaming the victim.

We have to stop protecting and excusing the offender.

That applies to the boy's parents as well as school officials. You're not doing him any favors, people. Will you be proud to have protected this kid fifteen or twenty years from now when he turns out to be Josh Duggar? Will you gladly display his picture and school honors when he's on trial for date-raping co-eds in college or roofie-ing women in clubs and bars?

By ignoring these early offenses and doing nothing "without evidence" because current social media technology has outpaced the ability to track and catch these budding predators, you are actively denying them an assessment by a professional who can determine if they need treatment. You're also potentially dooming his future victims.

But more broadly, by willingly shoving these incidents under the rug, you are telling boys that their behavior is acceptible. You are equipping them to be better predators -- because, hey, it worked this time, right? gonna get off free and clear, thanks to a Google account with multiple numbers -- and making them more confident in their methods. You are allowing them to go on to harass and violate countless other women in the future.

Worse, you're telling these girls that they are worthless. Their safety is unimportant. They can't trust anyone to help them when they're being terrorized, even if, by some miracle, someone believes them. You're teaching them that they are second-rate citizens who should be moved out of the way instead of dealing with the actual problem. That they're not safe in an environment they are forced to be in every weekday.

You, school officials and parents of offenders, have to stop it. You have to protect these girls. If it's happened to two girls in the same family, it has absolutely happened to others in the district.

How many more girls have been too ashamed or too scared of reprisal to complain? How many more girls have complained, only to have it swept under the rug because it'd be a real shame to ruin a boy's future when some girl didn't keep her mouth shut about a few compliments and a little extra squeeze? It was probably her fault anyway, right? Maybe she was showing her collarbones or her arms or her knees.

Do you believe a girl's safety is less important than a boy's education? Because right now, that's what my nieces are learning.

My niece is twelve years old, and she just received her first dick pic. Thanks to that, she also just learned the world's worst lesson.
She'll never feel safe again.