Ridiculously hot day around here yesterday. I think we either broke or came close to breaking a few records. Happily I had little outdoor work to do and I did it in the morning. I mentioned yesterday that my truck wouldn’t start. Charging it worked and I took for a little spin yesterday afternoon. There must be a lot of people without air conditioning. All the little swimming holes in our river had people at them. In one case quite a few people. I couldn’t tell just driving by if they were keeping their distance, but hopefully they were.

After lunch and an episode of MI-5 about a virus released in London, interesting subject given the pandemic, I made it to my writing desk around 1:30. I had a good writing day managing 6 pages. I’m starting to get a feel for this story and things are speeding up.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about an author who pulled her book from publication. Apparently the author did a bunch of research about a small community in the south and wrote a novel set there. The so called problem was she was white and the community was black. That seems to be a major no no these days. Anyway, she caught some crap on social media and basically got bullied into telling her publisher to pull the book.

I can’t even imagine how much time and effort she put into writing that novel then finding a publisher and getting a contract. I bet she spent years only to throw it all away because some lunatics online said she couldn’t write about that particular ethnic group. The worst part is, her publisher, as far as I can tell, was willing to still put the book out. She decided to cave to the pressure, not them.

To any creative people reading this I say to you please, don’t let anyone silence your voice. It there’s a story you want to tell, that excites you, ignore everyone that tells you that you can’t tell that story. Every story is unique to the person creating it. No one but you can tell the tales you dream up. When you let someone bully you into not sharing your story, you deprive all the potential readers of something unique and potentially wonderful. Don’t let that happen. Every time it does, the world gets a little duller.

Okay, preorder time. We had a big jump on The Great Northern War. They smashed through 700 up to 712. Thanks everyone for your support.

Talk to you tomorrow.