Audiobook!

Hello Friends,

I am releasing an audiobook edition of my short essay On Forgiveness. It should be available on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, and elsewhere, within the next four weeks. I decided to do this as an author-narrated audiobook, because I feel that author-narrated audiobooks have a certain authenticity which professionally narrated audiobooks lack (and it also saved me hundreds of dollars). So I narrated it myself, and I even learned how to edit and master audio files, to do that, too. Narrating it was actually surprisingly easy except my mouth became incredibly dry by the end of the recording session. Hope you will enjoy it!

Author Update

Coming up on two full months of vegetarianism! Well, I would be, if not for the fact that I did not know that the brown sauce in Chinese food is made from reduced meat broth. So, coming on two full months of intentional vegetarianism, to the exclusion of accidental meat byproduct consumption. Also never eating Chinese food ever again.

Also, I published a new book of poems.

I am an Amazon Bestselling Author!

It has happened. My book "A System of Legal Logic" is now the #1 best seller in the Litigation category of ebooks in the Top 100 Paid list on Amazon. That means I am now officially an Amazon Bestselling Author. I've had #1 new releases in a category, but before today I had not been #1 overall in a category.

In other news, today marks four full weeks as a vegetarian without eating meat, which is a new personal best for me. And I do not intend to eat meat again.

My Latest and Greatest

This month I published two new books, both of which feature new content not contained in any prior book:

A Fish Out of Water. This is based on material in my book "To Be Loved, Love; To Be Liked, Be Nice to People; To Be an Adult, Forgive People," it's based on the examples I gave about alcohol and negative behavior and self-forgiveness, but I rewrote the material, so the actual text itself is new and unique. The premise of the book is, there is a longstanding phrase "men of a certain age," and this collection of short stories isn't about them, but it is about "men of a certain blood alcohol content." The book is a set of short stories and flash fiction (they're really short stories but they're only 5 to 7 pages each, the entire book is 50 pages) all (well, mostly) focused on the topic of alcoholics who attempt to quit drinking alcohol. As a recovering alcoholic myself (100% sober for 13 years and yet I still think about alcohol at least once a week, especially because a lot of the queer scene in my town revolves around this one gay bar where everyone drinks), this is a topic where I can follow that sage writer's advice, "write what you know."

The other one is an epic young adult horror science fiction novel called "Manifestation." Perhaps the first thing that one will notice about it is that it is set in the far, far, far future, in the year 3891. I attempted to give a serious, realistic, coherent depiction of what life might look like for humans 2000 years in the future. Part of the fun of reading the novel is to assess whether that future looks real, and, if so, whether it is a dystopia or a utopia or maybe a little of both.

However, it isn't just about the setting. It has a fast-paced, clever, exciting plot, with fun, interesting characters. The book blurb explains the premise of the plot, so if you're interested, please feel free to take a look.

And, with that, I can officially declare that I am not working on any other books at the moment.

P.S. I have been vegetarian again for a full week and this time I think I've found a sustainable vegetarian diet. It's basically just eat rice and beans with a side of fresh vegetables for every meal. Rice and beans is the perfect vegetarian lunch or dinner. For veggies I am rotating broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, kale, and some other stuff.

My Latest Novel "Bloodthirsty Spiritualist"

So, now that I've stopped writing, I spend a lot of time writing....

Anyway, I wrote a new novel. It kind of just happened spontaneously, and it only took me five days to write it (it's 75 pages long). It's a novel at the intersection of literary fiction, urban fantasy, horror, and thriller, and LGBTQ literature, with an extreme focus on vampires. It does not fit neatly into any one genre. It's called Bloodthirsty Spiritualist. It's definitely the best work of fiction I ever wrote, although an argument can be made that I have written nonfiction books that might be better. I've been spending some time writing poetry at a writer's workshop recently (I do not intend to ever publish my poetry), and I think that writing poetry and getting a feel for how to write a poem has improved my quality of prose fiction, which is on display in my new novel. But I don't know, see what you think, you might like it, or you might dislike it.

My Latest Anthology "The United States of America, Freedom, Liberty, and Democracy"

Hello Dear Readers,

I took two of my recent essays, "Bunch of Crooks" and "The Right is Masculine," and repackaged them into a new updated revised edition which also includes new content, called "The United States of America, Freedom, Liberty, and Democracy." The revised version is better than the originals. "The Right is Masculine" was originally written in a somewhat confusing way, so I tried to clean that up. "Bunch of Crooks" was just focused on what a bunch of crooks the politicians are, but "The United States of America" connects the dots about why the fact that the politicians are crooks poses a deep and existential threat to democracy as a form of government. In the revised and updated new material, it also makes the case for Libertarians that democracy is necessary for anarcho-capitalism, by arguing that anarcho-capitalism, if it is to constitute true liberty, must be voted for and elected by the voters of a democracy in a democratic referendum election. Otherwise, if you try to impose freedom by force, then you are choosing freedom with one hand, and force with the other hand, and that collapses into a logical contradiction. And, no, that doesn't mean that I am saying that voters have the right to violate your individual rights by vote, but you will have to read the book to see why.

It's must-read stuff!

How to Eat Only Clean Food

If the goal of one's diet is to eat only "clean" food, I have identified these two principles with which to do so:

(1) Animal bodies are dirty. Therefore, animals are inherently dirty. Therefore meat, being the meat of animals and of their animal bodies, is inherently dirty. Therefore, a clean diet is a vegetarian diet.

(2) Junk food is dirty, because it literally contains the same nutritional value as eating an equivalent amount of dirt. So, a clean diet is one in which no junk food is eaten. And the test for whether something qualifies as "junk food" is: What nutrition do I gain from eating this that I would not gain from eating a pile of dirt?

All junk food is unclean and should never be eaten. However, soda is not junk food. All junk food is dirt, but soda has been misclassified as a type of junk food, when soda is a legitimate form of clean food.

My Top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time

Not necessarily in order (but more or less in somewhat of the right order):

(1) Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

(2) Star Wars: A New Hope

(3) Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

(4) Citizen Kane

(5) Casablanca

(6) It's a Wonderful Life

(7) The Super Mario Bros. Movie

(8) The Matrix

(9) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

(10) James Bond in Live and Let Die

Honorable Mentions:

My favorite lawyer movies: (1) Legally Blonde, (2) My Cousin Vinny

My favorite queer movies: (1) Love, Simon, (2) Bros

My Patreon Page

Hello Fans and Readers,

I have created a Patreon Page so that you can sponsor and support my work and be my patron. Any donation would be kindly appreciated. The link is below:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=90877901

Things I Feel Strongly About

(1) A dandelion is a flower, not a weed. And it's a cute flower!

(2) Coke is better than Pepsi. Period. End of discussion. No further debate is necessary.

(3) Alcohol is a drug. Alcoholism is a type of drug addiction.

The Trajectory of My Vegetarian Diet

I'm not going to lie, I have not been a perfect vegetarian, being vegetarian is tough! I would say that I am vegetarian 75% of the time. But I would like to share some vegetarian meal options that have become staples for me:

(1) Rice and beans.

(2) Salad

(3) Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And some that I have invented:

(4) The peanut butter and butter sandwich (it's exactly what it sounds like, and if you substitute margarine, it can become a vegan option)

(5) The peanut butter and honey sandwich, and

(6) Something that I call The Parfait, which you make by taking a cup, adding equal parts peanut butter, butter, and strawberry jelly, stir until mixed, and then serve cold and eat with a spoon.

And then there is this one:

(7) Bagels served cold and unsliced with nothing on them or in them. Just a bagel.