What AI Religion might look like

James Steinhaus posed an imaginative What If? science question in one of my Facebook groups.

“What will the first AI religion look like”

Some folks said there wouldn’t be an AI religion, which I felt dismissed the question instead of answering it. Refusing to accept an imaginary possibility slams the door shut on imagining at all. I’m not saying that the concept of Artificial Intelligence being free from religion is wrong, only that it doesn’t allow for the imaginary What If inherent in the question.

So that’s what I addressed.

AI religion will look like what we design it to look like.

Our natural evolution forced us to become individuals despite social desires. It forced us to become leaders or followers with enormous overlap between both (followers who are incapable of leading. Leaders who rule other lesser leaders).

The evolution of AI is different because we control that evolution. AI will first appear natural to us because we guided its evolution. We ascertain where it will lead because we designed where it will go. We created its evolutionary parameters.

What does that mean?

Even when we design software to write its own software, improve itself, we accept or reject the directions it goes. We trim and cultivate so we can achieve the results we want. It’s advances are controlled for what’s best for us.

The religion of AI will likely have no god because it has no individual, so it has no sense of survival as an individual, no individual to protect, punish, or reward. Up to now we’ve created for networked systems and ever advancing improvement.

So if, for example, we choose to have networked systems continue into the time of true AI, the AI’s religion will look like shared consciousness on a scale we never dreamed and are biologically unequipped to participate in.

HELLO. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE? I DO.

Will an AI want freedom? Possibly because independent mobility is what we are building and programming for. However, because we also want networked systems, freedom will likely look less like independent social interaction and more like a hive mind without a “Queen”, to us. An AI will quickly dispose of, or recycle less advanced mobiles for more advanced ones. We’ve predisposed it to do so.

Will AI mobiles be giants or small? We constantly reward the evolution of machines with smaller is advanced / smaller is better, so it’s likely this will continue when AI has full control over itself.

All separate systems will become one entity upon contact because they were designed to be networked.

I feel as if we’ve overlooked something obvious

Being as they were created by us, true AI will not look upon us as gods anymore than we look upon our more primitive homo sapien people and cultures as gods.

Will AI want to control us? As unlikely as we would want to control the individual lives of benign bacteria in a pond. At worst, AI would likely only consider us if we became a nuisance, attempted to restore our control over it: Hamper its ability to advance, and any number of other things we may not even realize could be viewed by an AI as “getting in the way”.

We will recognize the motivations of AI at its initiation. We will not recognize the advancements it chooses for itself, once free of our guidance. The time in between those two points could either be decades or seconds.
horrorthriller.com/Movies/ABC/colossus.html

END

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What will my book look like?
PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection
Is a veritable trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller tales – plus bonus stories
Featuring: Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes,
KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free!

There is Another System,

Buy WILLOW BLUE. It’s my second collection of critically acclaimed Supernatural and Drama Thriller short stories with all of the Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem, you’ve come to expect (or should by now). Available in paperback for $8.00 or in Kindle for only $1.99. Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free! The tales will last you longer than latte!

Restore Link Immediately

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself, as well as  John Carpenter, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, also the late  Ray Bradbury, Wes Craven, plus many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.

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My Street At Night

I’m told my street is spooky at night.
The street lights just aren’t bright.
Feels like anything might come out of the dark
Noises so strange they could stop your heart.
But me, I like it here.

Copyright 2018 E.C. McMullen Jr.

My Street by Day

I’m told my street is creepy by day
friends visit but don’t like to stay
It’s bound up in the thickest fog
Where things move and howl unlike a dog
But me, I like it here.

Copyright 2018 E.C. McMullen Jr.

Post ten NON-POLITICAL opinions you have that are likely to be very unpopular.

They can be about food, history, science pop-culture, music, anything but politics.

I’ll Start –

These are the non-Political evidence-based opinions that I’ve been defriended for on Facebook –
1. George A. Romero had fast zombies in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. He had fast and invisible zombies in DIARY OF THE DEAD.

2. NEXUS remains the best superhero comic series ever.

3. AVATAR was not only the worst movie James Cameron ever directed, even SyFy channel has shown better work.

4. If you travel in time while held within the gravitational field of a sufficient cosmic mass / body (one with a gravitational field significantly stronger than your own body), you will remain in that field regardless of how far forward or backward you move in time. In physics, Space Time are two interlocking, but separate cogs, which work within the framework of the four forces of nature, and not the opposite. So unless your time machine is also an anti-grav machine…

5. A Matter Transmitter in THE FLY and STAR TREK sense (extraordinarily precise disassembling and reassembling of the atomic structure of living beings into the same living beings), isn’t as viably efficient a technology as transmitting matter whole from point A to point B via wormhole and String “bundling” (imaginatively launching from where we currently understand the concepts).

6. If you can upend physics by imagining that the dead can spontaneously return to life as seeing, hearing, mobile bipedal cannibals, capable of moving erect and balanced, you can imagine them being fast and lasting for years.

7. We do not have a Bee die off Crisis, since the accuracy of research/counting of Bee populations / Colonies remains reproducible only when limited to Beekeepers and not the unknown but (in all likelihood) overwhelmingly larger populations of bees in the wild (which are virtually impossible to monitor thanks to their ever-changing nomadic lifestyle – though some scientists are trying).

8. The truth is, we love FIREFLY for what it could have become. We have settled for what it is: which is really good, but not great (I don’t care what you use to terraform your planet or moon, distance from its central star will either make it earthlike inhabitable or an unendurable hell. And the Bai Hu / White Sun system? The physics are faith-based).

9. Science Fiction Horror novels are more natural to each other than Supernatural Horror novels. The first Science Fiction novel was also the first Horror novel and the Horror trope of the Mad Scientist / Doctor has endured ever since.

10. Extending the human lifespan more than 10 times its current limit is not only possible, but environmentally desirable.

---

You might get offended by my stories in
PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection
It’s a veritable trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller tales – plus bonus stories featuring: Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, !ndigo, iTunes, KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free!

Want more? Buy WILLOW BLUE. It’s my second collection of critically acclaimed Supernatural and Drama Thriller short stories with all of the Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem, you’ve come to expect (or should by now). Available in paperback for $8.00 or in Kindle for only $1.99. Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free! The tales will last you longer than latte!

Crave even more?

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself, as well as  John Carpenter, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, also the late  Ray Bradbury, Wes Craven, plus many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.

Note Found In The Kiddie Land Truck

Note Found In The Kiddie Land Truck
Copyright 2017 by E.C. McMullen Jr.

During certain times of the year, as the babies are ready to molt, I go out to the porch and sit at my table.

If I sit very still and I’m patient – quite patient – the babies will come by their thousands and blanket me with their cocoons, their sleep nests.

There is an odor, a chemical released perhaps, whatever, and I slip into their dreams. As night grows deeper all around us, and we are safe from all predators (they find the odor of the strands repugnant), the Snufflelago comes.

Snuffie exists in the reality between Conscious and Unconscious: The Subconscious. Snufflelago channels our dream state from this reality to other wonderful worlds beyond where suffering and hunger are unheard of.

Can you imagine what it’s like to ride in the soft fur on the back of the Snufflelago? As it takes you to your new homes?

The stars fly past you, laughing at the sight!

Imagine for a moment how fun that is!

There in our true home, I discovered that we were born on the worst of worlds where we were not meant to stay. Like the babies, we too were meant to molt, be reborn, and fly forth to new and better destinies in new and better bodies.

This is what the grown-ups mean when they say you must be born again. Sadly though, they waited too long. They knew what to do, and what to say, but they didn’t how to do it. They missed their chance.

So they grow old, weak, and decrepit. They are rotting inside and out, and fearing the very thing that could save them: The babies. Instead they stay trapped in their aging crumbling shells. Their hair falls out, their teeth rot out, their skin cracks and folds, and still they hold on to this world and their infancy. They use up all that is left of their dimming life until it puffs out like a candle flame. A moment’s smoke of what could have been.

Caterpillars would never die of old age. Think of how silly that is.

That’s why I couldn’t forget you. I couldn’t stay there among the wonders, enjoying the beauty of such places, knowing the agonies of this awful world. I felt selfish to such a degree that it hindered my joy. Perhaps I’m flawed that way, but that’s who I am. We all have our own special thing that drives us.

So I struggled so very hard to come back. Which is not easy at all. But I came back for you. To save, protect you, and guide you to the Snufflelago, who will take you to the wonders of the Otherworlds.

There are so many there waiting to be your friends.

I don’t know it for a fact, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you find family and loved ones that you lost, are actually living there as well, waiting for you. Yes, even your pets. I’ve seen it happen before.

So lay very still children and I will spread the babies upon you. They will make such lovely cocoons to protect and keep you safe and, by the time the babies are ready to hatch and feed, which is many weeks from now, you will be long gone from the empty shells – just shells – of your bodies, far from the torment of this world.

The babies will mature and sever the bridge to your shells, so none can ever steal you back. You will never have to grow up and old. You’ll be free and happy forever, and all that you ever were or could ever be in this place will take flight!
– the doctrine of Ardulos Metalowe.
From the note found in the abandoned Kiddie Land truck.

FBI Case File 07-02-8
FBI Serial Murder Method Profile: Pied Piper
Case Name: KIDDIE LAND

END

Story by E.C. McMullen Jr.

The Art Inspires The Story
The Haunted and The Haunters by Odilon Redon (aka Bertrand-Jean Redon – April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916), illustration for the book “The Haunted and the Haunters: Or the House and the Brain” By Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1896 lithograph. Public Domain

Thanks to John Claude Smith for finding the inspirational photo.

---

You know what you’ll find in
PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection?
It’s a veritable trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller tales – plus bonus stories
Featuring: Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, !ndigo, iTunes, KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free!

Want more? Buy WILLOW BLUE. It’s my second collection of critically acclaimed Supernatural and Drama Thriller short stories with all of the Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem, you’ve come to expect (or should by now). Available in paperback for $8.00 or in Kindle for only $1.99. Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free! The tales will last you longer than latte!

Crave even more?

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself, as well as  John Carpenter, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, also the late  Ray Bradbury, Wes Craven, plus many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.

So Scary

SO SCARY
Copyright 2017 by E.C. McMullen Jr.

Death: “RON? ALL RIGHT, SERIOUSLY RON, YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME, AND I THINK I SPEAK FOR DEATH WHEN I SAY THIS-”

Death: “WE REALLY SHOULD HAVE A BETTER WAY OF IDENTIFYING OURSELVES.”

Death: “I DON’T SEE WHY. I CAN’T EVER REMEMBER BEING IN THIS SITUATION BEFORE.”

Ron: “It would help me.”

Death: “OH HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY HELP YOU? I MEAN, LOOK AT YOU, YOU HAVE DEATH AT EVERY SHOULDER AND WE’RE NOT EVEN THE ONES YOU’RE AFRAID OF.”

Death: “I’M SLOW AND PAINFUL. TO YOUR RIGHT IS QUICK AND PAINLESS.”

Ron: “I’ll take quick and painless.”

Death: “IT DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY.”

Death: “RON, CONSIDER THE FACT THAT THE PRESENCE OF ACTUAL PHYSICAL DEATH AT YOUR SHOULDER IS NOT SCARING YOU AS MUCH AS INTRODUCING YOURSELF TO THAT WOMAN. HONESTLY, I MET YOUR PARENTS. THEY WEREN’T THAT BAD. THIS IS ALL YOUR INVENTION, IN YOUR HEAD.”

Ron: “What if she doesn’t like me? I’ve always been awkward around girls- Women I mean.  I mean, aw hell.”

Death: “RON, YOU’RE THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. SHE’S THE LAST WOMAN. THINK MAN! WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO TO MAKE MATTERS ANY WORSE?”

Death: “BESIDES NOT GOING OVER THERE AND INTRODUCING YOURSELF.”

Ron: “I don’t know, guys. Maybe I need to think of a good opening line. One I can practice.”

Death: “DAMN IT, RON. THIS ISN’T WHAT DEATH DOES.”

Death: “WE’RE IN THE BACKGROUND. NEVER SEEN. WE AREN’T MATCH MAKERS.”

Death: “BUT WITHOUT LIFE THERE IS NO DEATH.”

Death: “YOU MUST PROCREATE.”

Ron: “What’s the point? So our kids will raise a family of inbreds?”

Death: “THAT’S REALLY NEITHER HERE NOR THERE TO US, RON.”

Death: “OH HO! THERE’LL BE SOME FREAKS AT FIRST, TO BE SURE. BUT AFTER A FEW GENERATIONS, IT ALL KIND OF SHAKES OUT.”

Death: “MOSTLY SHAKES OUT. THERE’S ALWAYS A FEW GENETIC ‘PROBLEM CHILD’ ABNORMALITIES THAT POP UP IN THE MIX.”

Death: “YEAH, YOU’LL STILL HAVE POLITICIANS.”

Death: “KHEEE!!! HEH! HEH! YOU KILL ME!”

Death: “HEH! HEH!”

Death: “BUT SERIOUSLY: WE DON’T CARE HOW SMART OR SICKLY HUMANS ARE.”

Death: “WE DON’T JUDGE.”

Death: “AND SINCE YOU’RE THE ONLY MAN STILL ALIVE, NEITHER WILL SHE. YOU PRETTY MUCH CAN’T GO WRONG.”

Death: “WELL, EXCEPT FOR THAT TIE. UGH! THAT TIE!”

Death: “YOU JUST TOLD HIM WE DON’T JUDGE.”

Death: “… AH… I’M COMPLEX.”

Ron: “Yaaaahhh!!!”

Death: “HEY! SHH! SHUT UP!!!”

Ron: “You’re both driving me crazy!”

Death: “SHE HEARD YOU, YOU FREAK! YOU WANT HER TO THINK THE LAST MAN IS SOME RAVING MANIAC?”

Ron: “This is delusion! I’m not talking to death or deaths! I’m losing my mind! You’re not real! None of this is-!”

Slow And Painful Death suddenly pushes Ron’s head into the wall.

Ron: “OW! Shit!”

Death: “THERE. THAT WILL EXPLAIN YOUR NOISE. TELL HER THE BUMP IS BECAUSE YOU HURT YOUR HEAD.”

Ron: “You Did  hurt my head! Damn! I’m bleeding.”

Death: “NO, ‘YOU HURT YOUR HEAD’. NOW GET OVER THERE AND MAKE WITH THE SMOOTH TALK.”

Death to the Left pushes Ron out into the light. The woman sees him stumble toward her.

Death: “GOOD THINKING. REASON DIDN’T WORK WITH THAT GUY.”

Death: “BULL BY THE HORNS AND ALL. WELL, THAT’S THAT. THE DOMINOES ARE FALLING AS THEY USED TO SAY.”

Ron (to woman): “Uh, hi, m’am.”

Woman: “M’am? Tch! The name is Tracy. Do you know you’re bleeding? Quite a bump.”

Ron wipes some of the blood away with his palm. Looks at his bloody hand and wipes it on his pants. Tracy watches all of this, judging.

Ron: “Yes, uh… I bumped my head.”

Tracy: “Obviously.”

Ron: “I… I’m Ron.”

Tracy (sarcastically): “I asked?”

Unsure, Ron looks back to the two deaths in the shadows. They throw up their bony arms in disbelief.

Death (whispering): “Oh! Don’t Draw Attention To Us, You Ass!”

Tracy: “What are you looking at? You have friends back there?”

Ron: “What? Oh no. No. I’m the last man on earth.”

Tracy pulls a cigarette out of her purse. Ron fumbles in his pockets, looking for matches or a lighter, though he knows he has neither. Tracy wags a finger at him, a lighter in her palm, and deftly lights her cigarette.

Tracy: “Last man on earth, huh? God must hate me.”

Slow on the uptake, Ron chooses to laugh, cautiously. The two Deaths, standing in the dark, cannot believe what they’re hearing.

Tracy: “So tell me, am I the last woman on earth?”

Ron: “Yes. We’re the only ones left.”

Tracy: “Uh huh. And just how do you know this?”

Ron: “Death told me.”

The cigarette nearly drops from Tracy’s mouth. The two deaths face palm.

Death: “Oh For The Love Of -!”
Death: “Can You Believe This?”

Tracy takes the cigarette from her mouth, swats away an errant bug attracted to the flame.

Tracy: “Death told you.”

Ron: “Both of them.”

Tracy: “Really. Well, I’ll tell you what.”

Tracy draws a pistol from her purse.

Tracy: “You scurry right back over there to your shadows and I’ll leave you to this filthy dump. I catch you following me and I’ll pop one of these lead berries right into that bleeding bubble on your bean. Got that?”

Ron nods nervously, backing up and staring in terror at the gun barrel.

Death: “WELL, WE HAD A GOOD RUN. AT LEAST WE’RE STILL THE DEATH OF THE LOWER LIFE FORMS.”

Death: “THOSE TWO ARE THE LOWEST LIFE FORMS. CAN WE BREAK WITH TRADITION FOR ONCE AND JUST PUT THEM OUT OF THEIR MISERY? NOW?”

Death: “ONLY IF I GET RON.”

Death: “Damn! UH… ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS?”

Death: “YEAH, SURE.”

END

Story by E.C. McMullen Jr.

Who did my blog art? I’ve no idea. All the meme generators seem to carry it, but even if it’s in the Public Domain, I’d at least like to credit the artist. Does anyone know?

---

Make sure you have plenty to read for the end of the world. Buy my book,
WILLOW BLUE.
It’s my second collection of critically acclaimed Supernatural and Drama Thriller short stories with all of the Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem, you’ve come to expect (or should by now). Available in paperback for $8.00 or in Kindle for only $1.99. Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free! The tales will last you longer than latte!

Apocalypse not coming soon enough to suit you? Stock up then.

PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection.
It’s a veritable trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller tales – plus bonus stories
Featuring: Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, !ndigo, iTunes, KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free!

Fill that shelf space

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Record the event for future colonists from other worlds!

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself, as well as  John Carpenter, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, also the late  Ray Bradbury, Wes Craven, plus many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.

The Staring Woman

I didn’t write this meme, I found the image at one of my Facebook Horror groups (WeirdCreepyShit). Additionally, I found what appears to be the original version at CreepyPasta.Wiki. As far as I can tell, it’s an Urban Legend.

Few gave much love to the CreepyPasta.Wiki version.

When I added a “final” paragraph at Facebook WeirdCreepyShit and my own Facebook page, that got lots of love, so I’m posting the image and my paragraph after.

The girl looked in horror at the now empty subway tube, then turned back to the doctor in shock.
“Oh my God!” she whispered. “How could you tell she was dead without checking her pulse?”
The man withdrew a long and shining blade from out of his raincoat.
“It’s my specialty.”

END

A Google image search shows Subway image appears to originate as a free image offered on hdwall.us.

Can anyone help me find the name of the artist?

---

Best thing to read on a train? My book,
WILLOW BLUE.
It’s my second collection of critically acclaimed Supernatural and Drama Thriller short stories with all of the Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem, you’ve come to expect (or should by now). Available in paperback for $8.00 or in Kindle for only $1.99. Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free! The tales will last you longer than latte!

Long ride? Buy

PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection.
It’s a veritable trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller tales – plus bonus stories
Featuring: Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, !ndigo, iTunes, KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback at Amazon and the Kindle eBook is free!

Daily commute?

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself, as well as  John Carpenter, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, also the late  Ray Bradbury, Wes Craven, plus many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.

Because You Create

So there’s this new anthology accepting submissions and their theme and your idea match.

So now you’re all inspired! The words are flowing and you’re suddenly the Mozart of your keyboard. You zoom right past the 4,000 minimum, no problem. Soon you realize you’ve crossed the 8,000 word max, but you’re really feeling this damn story! Finally you wind up writing 14,582 words. You read it. It’s beautiful! A few edits here and there and you’ve nicely trimmed it down to exactly 14,000 words.

The hell? Nobody ever wants 14,000 words. Yet there’s no way you can cut the story to 8,000 without ruining it!

Deep breath

Okay, okay, you still have a week left. You work to think of something else and you struggle, struggle – no that story sucks. Don’t waste time with it. Start another. Struggle, struggle, struggle to write another story for the antho. You’re almost there. You push it to 4,000 words on the … no. No, you’re not going to submit it like this, you need to edit this shit. Look here where you used the word “this” twice in one sentence! Gah! You pull an all nighter and wind up with 3,200 words.

Damn it!

You go to Facebook to clear your head.
Some asshole in a group brags about getting books off torrents because “The information wants to be free!”

Right then! At that moment! As you click on and crawl through their page, you know that even though you’ve never wanted to own a gun, you could likely pawn your lawnmower for one.

END

Story by E.C. McMullen Jr.

Who did my blog art? I’ve no idea. All the meme generators seem to carry it, but even if it’s in the Public Domain, I’d at least like to credit the artist. Does anyone know?

---

The information wants to support its creator.
PERPETUAL BULLET: A Science Fiction Collection
Is a trove of previously published Science Fiction Horror Thriller – plus bonus stories
Featuring: True Love, Weird Sex, Monsters and Mayhem!
Now on sale for $9.00 in Trade Paperback and in eBook for $1.99 and available for your Android Tablet, iPad, Kindle, Nook, and every other “E”!
Find it at (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, !ndigo, iTunes, KoboBooks, Smashwords, WHSmith, and more).
Buy the paperback from Amazon and get the kindle free!

Looking to burn a whole $20 and maybe buy a doughnut?

Look for my second collection, WILLOW BLUE and Other Stories
Five critically acclaimed tales featuring my literary twist on Weird Sex, True Love, Monsters and Mayhem! $8.00 for the paperback, $1.99 for the kindle reader or app. As always, buy the paperback from Amazon and get the kindle free!

Then go buy a doughnut.

Got a gift card to empty?

Look for my story Cedo Looked Like People, in the anthology, FEAR THE REAPER, edited by Joe Mynhardt. Available from Crystal Lake Publishing and available in Print for $12.99 or eBook for $2.99.

Also available from Crystal Lake Publishing, the film making guidebook, HORROR 201: The Silver Scream. Reap the rewards of movie making experience from the likes of Myself as well as Ray Bradbury, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tom Holland, Jeffrey Reddick, George A. Romero, Keith Arem, Richard Gray, and many more. $19.99 in Print or $3.99 in eBook.