B is for Bask

-->

B is for Bask

When we bought our house in Central Florida, the former home owner handed me a long, slender strip of wood with a bent coat hanger hook stapled at one end.

He said, “This is your snake stick. You’re going to need it.” With that, he and his lovely wife climbed into their RV and roared off into the Florida sunset. The snake stick is designed to humanely lift cold-blooded snakes off the handle of the garbage can—a handle that a human might be about to grab with his/her bare, warm-blooded hand.

I didn’t even get a chance to thank him for my new snake stick.

And I should have. Thanked him. Black snakes patrol the foundation of our home like North Korean soldiers looking for random American tourists or Christian hikers. They bask—to expose oneself pleasantly to warmth—in the sun on my walkways. They drape—to fall or hang in loose folds—themselves in the branches of my hedges. They shed—to fall off—their skins among my sunflowers.

They make me wet—tinkling urine out of fear—in my pants.

Not that I’m anti-snake. I’m not. But dang, is there an animal on the face of the earth better at the “gotcha game” than the cold-blooded snake? I think not.

How many snakes, you ask? Approximately twelve dozen or one really busy one. I’m not sure.

What do they want, you may wonder? Lizards.

Florida is awash with creepy, crawly types, and I don’t just mean the massage parlor boys. Lizards dart, whip, creep, flick, and crawl all over the screens of our porch. Our snakes have developed an interesting lizard hunting technique. They slither along the base of the porch and then leap straight up to pluck distracted lizards off the porch screen. True story. I’ve seen it. Our snakes can leap—about as high as a couple of chubby toddlers stacked one on top of another.

Snake stick? You bet. I carry it with me when I stroll through the pasture or feed the chickens or breathe fresh air. I worry that the snakes will mistake me for a porch screen covered in lizards. It might not be a rational concern, but it is real.

Today, I smacked a lizard off the back-porch screen, sending it flying into the yard. It hit the ground, gained its feet, and blazed its way back to the safety of the porch screen. A wily black snake gobbled the lizard up inches from safety, and now I’m going to have to continue to feed the foundation snakes or they’ll break into the house and punish us. I know it.

It’s not a rational worry, but it is real.

Linda (Snake Skin) Zern

      

A is for Ameliorate

WRITING MY WAY THROUGH THE DICTIONARY:

A is for Ameliorate

I don’t know anyone who isn’t writing a book, who isn’t thinking about writing a book, who hasn’t already written a book, or having written a book isn’t now planning to write My Book, Part Two—Cash, Check, or Charge.  All of which is wildly exciting—also bewildering. It’s a brave new book-writing world.

Guttenberg would be proud—also bewildered, I bet.

I’ve written a book—of course—well ten books, actually. One of which is a middle grade, soft cover, work of historical fiction called MOONCALF. It’s literature. It contains no sex, drugs, wizards, or rock and roll. I made $1.68 cents in royalties last month, and I’m competing with 700,000 other titles in my category on Amazon.  I have twenty-one EXCELLENT reviews on Amazon and only one of them is my mother.

The problem with everyone writing a book, including my poet house painter, is not the competition, but it’s the sheer mathematical mass of the competition. It’s like being one oat in a silo of oats or a jet liner at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Tricky. Very tricky to get noticed.

A writer friend of mine suggested paying for and participating in a Book Blast to ameliorate the trickiness of being one book in the flood of one million plus titles published each year.

I did this and wrote the check.  Please don’t ask me what a Book Blast is, because I still don’t know.  I think it’s when your book title gets tweeted by a trillion people hoping to win a free _________________ (fill in the blank.)

It was fun.  I got lots of strangers wanting to be my tweety friends and email pals.

I also got promptly hacked, causing my new email, tweety friends to send me messages alerting me to the hackage. They were very nice about the hundreds of posts advertising weight loss products that appeared to be coming from my fat bottom. They said, “Hey, you’ve been hacked. Fix that would you.” It wasn’t a request.

My book, MOONCALF, was not mentioned.

And so, I ameliorated—a word meaning to make better or improve—the problem of someone pretending to be me by changing all my passwords, ninety percent of which I’ve promptly forgotten.

No worries. I press on. My next book Healing the Strandline (third in The Strandline series) is a young adult romantic prepper action adventure that will fit nicely into the already over-crowded young adult romantic prepper action adventure genre.

To ameliorate the potential of being crushed under the endless weight of vampires, shape shifters, and death game players, I plan to keep my characters naked for the entire book as they fly from spot to spot while hanging from their own personal drones.

No, I don’t. 

Someone’s probably already written that book.

Linda (Better Now?) Zern  

   

       

 

The Next Epistle of Saint Zern

1  

1      And they did continue to dwell among the eagles and racoons in the land of Florida Central, having fought the good fight against the state taxation found in the land of Carolina in the north country, finding it grievous. And they did rejoice in a land both warm and cheap.

2       And thus, we see that Sherwood and Linda did endeavor to live as goodly parents and doting grandparents in the land with no state income tax.

3       And it was done with good intent, whilst they did binge on Netflix and the like.

4      Furthermore, it was with great happiness that they did, in the year of our Lord, 2018, count among their greatest gifts and blessings the children that they did count as grand. And Phillip and Heather begat Zoe and Conner and Kipling and Zachary and Griffin and even one more, Ender. His name being that of a character in a most excellent book.

5      Maren and Thomas begat Reagan and Hero and Leidy and Boone the Baby pants.

6      To them also did Adam and Sarah count Emma and Sadie and Scout and the youngest of them, Ever Jane, who did vex many with her dislike of the chamber pot; however, much she did smile and show forth much spunkiness.

7       And in the land northward, a land of much snow and cucumbers, they did see Aric and Lauren bring forth both Silas and Ellie.

8       And it was like a tribe of old that did grow and prosper and become both fair and delightsome.

9      And so, there was the giving of great thanks.

10    And the honor was Poppy’s, who was both adored and admired by the children he found grand and who did arrive daily asking, where doth Poppy dwell and is there Pepsi and candy?

11    But behold, YaYa did impose the rule of law, and receiveth much in the way of deathly looks and muttered curses, but she doth continue to hold high the standards of truth and meanness.

12   But it came to pass that YaYa did both rule and reign and bring forth collections of her words, arranged in blocks called paragraphs, numbered on pages, bound up in books called novels. And she did continue forth writing much, yea even a great number of volumes which can be found at a place called amazon.com/author/lindazern 

13   And now, it came to pass in the fortieth year of their being wedded that Sherwood and Linda did continue in this vein, sitting much in the afternoon and evening gathered about a pot of fire recounting the days of their youth and silliness. And they did laugh much at the memories and silliness.

14   And they caused that their family did stand in readiness, lest they be caught flat of foot in the last days. 

15   And I make an end.