This will be a short post. I have a headache, and there’s much to do. It’s the third week of Advent, after all, which means Christmas is nearly here.

Last week’s story:

I finished “A Very Alien Christmas” just today, so again I am all caught up! I feel good! And there’s only two stories to go! Which is good, because I’m starting to feel a bit burned-out on this project. Understandable, I think. I have, after all, written fifty-four short stories so far this year, and I am looking forward to pulling some out of the stack and work on revising them. Some will need heavy revision; some will only need a little. Some will require no revision at all, beacause they may never see the light of day. But that’s okay! I’ve added substantially to my stable of short stories, which was one of my goals for the year.

This week’s prompt:

I rolled a 3 on the d8, so I drew from the Science Fiction deck. Then I rolled a 2 on the d6, which means the subgenre will be romance. This is good, because I’ve been wanting to finish up the story of William and Sheila. I mean, I wrapped up their romance last time I visited them, but there’s more story to tell there, so I’m going to look into their origin stories. Why not? Prequels are all the rage, are they not?

Anyway, here’s the prompt:

A government-backed data scientist wants to unseat a politician with an algorithm, but they will be cut off from the network forever.

As I’ve done in recent stories, I’ll make it romance-forward, meaning it will be the “hero ingredient” of the story (a term I borrowed from a baking show, I admit). All the political shenanigans will be background. I’ll make this story work, I really will!

This week’s recommendation:

This week I’m recommending to my readers a non-fiction book, a book about philosophy and religion, and it is Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial by Guy Consolmagno and Paul Mueller. I don’t know much about Mr. Mueller, but I’ve met Guy a few times and interacted with him online, and he’s a great thinker and a wonderful human being. He’s an astronomer as well, and a Jesuit priest. I have a lot of respect for him. I once posted that I considered the Book of Jonah to be the funniest book in the Bible (which it really is), and he replied, agreeing with me and giving me a couple of ideas I hadn’t even considered. Exciting!

Anyway. That’s this week’s recommendation.

And, as always:

Be safe, be kind. Be punk as fuck, even if you listen to Beethoven and you spend yesterday evening filling up your pill organizer for the week. And see you next week for the final one of these.