A.C. Flory's Blog, page 6

Queensland Flood Relief

I just watched Landline on TV, and the plight of the animals almost broke my heart. Stock that didn’t drown are now slogging through deep mud, looking for something to eat. The farmers are doing what they can, and the chopper pilots are providing a vital lifeline to people and animals stranded in the aftermath, but it’s up to us, the lucky ones down south to help right now, when the need is the most urgent.

This is me:

To every Aussie who stumbles across my blog: please give something, no matter how small. I could only afford some money for hay, but every little bit counts.

And to all of those who have lost so much, you are not alone.

Love,
Meeks

More Tukti graphics

I have found words very stressful since 2020. First it was Covid, now it’s the insanity happening in the US. What’s the point of writing fiction when reality is so awful? So to save my sanity, I’ve been playing with graphics instead:

I can’t paint, so everything in this graphic is created using copyright free photos that I have snipped and shaped using Corel Draw X8.

To give you some idea of the process, the scene above is made up of 105 individual ‘bits’. Some, like that glorious sunset are single images, others, like the red Vokh flying in the sky are made up of multiple bits:

The pale bits are transparencies that help create the illusion of 3 dimensionality using light and shade. And all of those bits came from just one photo:

That lobster has become one of my most valuable images because of its beautiful gradations of colour, and the play of light across its carapace. And it’s a copyright free photo as well.

I wish I could paint like some of you, but at the end of the day, we all have to find our own creative medium, and when words fail, this is mine.

Cheers,
Meeks

Food…for thought

I am an unashamed foodie, and I always have been because my Mother made everything from scratch. Her food was always fresh, and as a result, I grew up respecting the food I eat. Now, have a look at how Japan thinks about food:

cheers,
Meeks

Sorry, I just had to share. :D

This is so wrong and yet so right. It pokes fun, not at trans people, but at Elon Musk who has the gall to say woke ideals ‘killed’ his son.

Musk’s son is now his daughter, and she totally repudiates the bastard.

Cheers,
Meeks

Political censorship at Amazon?

If you have been reading my blog posts since January 20, 2025, you will know that I am subscribed to a couple of political channels on Youtube. They belong to Kyle Kulinski and Brian Tyler Cohen. I also pop in to David Pakman’s channel now and then. Today, I discovered that both David Pakman and Brian Tyler Cohen are published authors on Amazon. And here’s where it gets chilling:

Both Pakman and Cohen’s books may be withdrawn from Amazon because of political and financial pressure applied to Amazon by people associated with the Trump Administration.

To put this into context, both of these authors are critical of the Trump administration, and both have a huge following on Youtube. They are political influencers, and that means they are a potential threat to Donald J. Trump. Ergo, the indirect attempt at censorship.

Amazon may or may not bow to pressure, but given Bezos’ buddying up to tRump, I fear the worst. Please watch the video below for a detailed explanation of what is happening:

And if you are an author like me, and like both of these two brave men, then asks yourself whether it might not be time to migrate your books away from Amazon?

I stopped buying books on Amazon a while ago. Now I think I might take my books and republish them on Kobo. Rakuten Kobo is a Canadian company and should be immune to the madness overtaking the US.

If you want to know more about Kobo, you can find some basic stuff here. Some things you will have to consider are:

format – your books will need to be epub files,and whether or not to buy your own ISBNs. Kobo will supply its own version of an ISBN – similar to the Amazon ASIN – but as with the ASIN, the Kobo version won’t be accepted everywhere. And finally, you must face the fact that you will probably have to ‘start over’ with regard to marketing.

This, more than anything else, may make it impossible for many of you to leave Amazon. Nevertheless, if the situation in the US continues to degrade, it’s good to know that you have options other than Amazon.

Meeks

Trump’s Tariff Policy – where did it come from?

I’m linking this video from the point at which Kyle Kulinski starts answering that million trillion dollar question:

I would highly recommend watching the whole video, but I know time is precious so I’ll just summarise the bit about Trump’s tariffs:

Trump asked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to find him an economics expert,Kushner hopped onto amazon.com and went looking for books that seemed to match Trump’s ideas,Kushner found a book titled ‘Death by China’,Death by China was written by a guy called Peter Navarro,Peter Navarro is big on tariffs, but he’s not an economist,Where did Navarro get his ideas from?In his books, Navarro quotes extensively from an ‘expert’ named Ron Vara,Unfortunately, Ron Vara does not exist,The name ‘Ron Vara’ is an anagram of ‘Navarro’.So…Peter Navarro created a fictional character called Ron Vara in order to legitimise his beliefs about tariffs.And Trump has based all of his tariff policies on this made-up ‘expert’.

I write fiction, but if I wrote something like this? People would mock me for writing such a poor plot. And they’d be right.

Why write fiction when reality is so awful?

Meeks

Look at the wheels!!!

You’re looking at a Chinese BYD car with insane suspension. Gods I want one of these. If I ever win Tatts, this is what I’d spend my windfall on. Beautiful styling and genuinely innovative tech. Love it.

Meeks

Normalising the crazy…

Trump running for a third term? ‘Can’t be done,’ you say. Or can it?

The thing I like about Brian Tyler Cohen is that he is a really good analyst. So when he talks about tRump saying crazy things over and over again, until they don’t sound quite so crazy any more, I think we should listen.

Meeks

Human art in real time

AI eat your heart out.

Meeks

Glencrow Summer by C. Litka

In the blurb for Glencrow Summer, the author describes the story as ‘…a leisurely paced, mundane slice-of-life fantasy novel set in a post-magic, Edwardian-era world…’ Well, I’d agree with the ‘leisurely paced part’; reading Glencrow Summer was like gently sinking into a warm bath on a cold day. It felt good. However, I definitely disagree with the ‘fantasy novel in a post-magic’ world bit!

To me, Glencrow Summer is a post-apocalyptic story without the apocalypse, and by that I mean the brutality and violence.

By the time the story begins, society is about thirteen hundred years into its Second Founding. In other words, thirteen hundred years after the possibly apocalyptic events that ended the First Founding.

Society is stable, the populous is comfortable, and the world is ‘clean’. There are vehicles that run on electricity, but most jobs are done manually, and there appears to be little in the way of high end technology. This lack of tech is explained as being a result of the Humanist revolution that ended the First Founding. Curiously though, the history books call the tech of that era magic, and magic is now banned.

See what I mean about the world building being post-apocalyptic?

We are introduced to some of this background in the first book of the series – Chateau Clare – but it’s not until Glencrow Summer that the characters slowly discover why the apocalypse happened, and why so much of their history has been either forgotten, or actively suppressed. That journey of discovery may not include space battles or dangerous acts of derring-do, but it is every bit as compelling as learning about Arrakis, the world of Dune.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that Dune continues to excite the imagination because its world is one of the main characters of the story. Yes, the plot is exciting, but what I most remember is the thrill of learning why Arrakis is so barren. And what role the giant worms play in the creation of ‘spice’.

Like Dune, the world of Glencrow Summer is one of the main characters of the story, and unravelling its history is intriguing. But, of course, no story would survive for long without human characters we can relate to, and the characters of Glencrow Summer are eminently relatable. They are people just like us. They have faults and virtues and individual histories that make them who they are, and that is why their journey of discovery becomes our journey of discovery.

I cannot tell you more because that would be like revealing who-dunnit on page one of a murder mystery. This journey of discovery you have to take on your own, but I promise it will be worth every moment. Oh, and the beautiful cover? C. Litka happens to be a fantastic painter so each cover is a Litka original!

5/5

Disclaimer: C. Litka was kind enough to send me an ARC copy of Glencrow Summer when I complained about not being able to buy books from Amazon any more. He didn’t ask for a review, and I told him I only review books that go above and beyond. Glencrow Summer does just that, and I’m more than happy to recommend it.

You can find this review on Goodreads here.

Cheers,
Meeks