Charity Sunday 29 August 2021: The Rotten Noggin Fund

 

Justin Ward is a great guy with a wicked sense of humor who has inoperable metastatic brain cancer. He is hoping to raise enough money to help his family cover his final expenses. 

Here is the link to Justin's fundraiser.

https://gofund.me/a52667d2

You can also follow Justin on Twitter.

HTTP://twitter.com/ABleedingCorpse

I will donate a dollar to Justin's fund for every comment I receive on this post. Thank you.

I'd like to share a bit from a very different kind of WIP that I am working on. It's something that I've started and stopped numerous times. I think that this time I'm actually going to go through with it. My son has expressed strong support for my doing so.

Breaking Free From My Addiction to Validation

Genre: Autobiography, Nonfiction, Mental Health

Blurb

I have tried to write this book many times.

This time I am writing it with guidance from the book Self-Help Sucks by Tony Blankenship.

https://amzn.to/3sCWA9q

This is a short, easy-to-read book based on the Twelve Step method.

I’ve always been critical of the Twelve-Step method, but I liked Tony’s approach, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I’m fortunate to have been able to avoid physical addictions such as alcohol, drugs, or nicotine.

I am using the book to help me focus on healing my need for approval.

I do not think that anything will work out for me if I am doing it to gain approval from others rather than doing it because I love it and believe in it.

My approval-seeking behavior leaves me depressed and unsatisfied. It is a futile search for something that I wasn’t given as a child. I keep looking for validation from people who clearly have no interest in me or my creations. This is a waste of time and can only end in heartache.

Nonetheless, I am addicted to validation given by others. When someone compliments me on one of my creations, I feel buoyant. When others criticize my work, I crumble.

I need to either stop sharing my work altogether or stop depending on the approval of others.

This is necessary for my overall well-being.

I am 56 years old, and time is not on my side.

I need to do what feels right regardless of whether others approve.

I need to free myself from the trap of seeking validation from others at long last.

Fair warning that if you have a problem with profanity, this is not the book for you.

Day 1

21 August 2021

Spirit of the Universe, please set aside everything I think I know about myself, about my story, about my need for validation, and especially about you, Universe, so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with myself, with my story, with my need for validation, and with you, Universe. Please help me to see the truth. Amen.

Today’s meditation: Introduction to Zazen Meditation with Jason Cain

https://www.jasoncain.net/books-audios/meditation-audio-singles

I have thirsted for validation from others for literal decades.

Please tell me that I’m okay, that you like me, that my writing is good.

Please tell me that you want to be my friend.

Please tell me that I’m worth something.

Please tell me that I’m not just all wrong and fucked up and somehow deserve to be kicked every time I’m down.

Please tell me that I’m good just the way I am.

Please tell me that you like me.

Please like me.

Please don’t hate me.

Please validate me.

I’ve promised myself many times that I would stop doing this. I don’t need validation from others. I am enough. It’s enough that I appreciate the things that I create. Fuck everyone else and their stupid, useless opinions. Fuck those haters.

Somehow, I still end up craving validation.

Things are far from harmonious, especially in my head.

When I go into a tailspin because I haven’t gotten the validation that I need, everything suffers. My mood, my writing, even everyday tasks like cooking and doing the dishes.

I admit that I am powerless over my desire for validation and my life is unmanageable.

Dear divine spirit of the Universe, please help me to surrender my need for validation to you.

Free use image by Bedexp Stock

Ornery Owl, waxing philosophical about the nature of life, the Universe, and everything

(Free-use image from Pixabay)

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Want more?

Get it here!

http://bit.ly/morennp

FOAD Thursday: Amazon Woes (Again)

 

Once again, the insufferable fucknuggets at Amazon can FOAD

Since the nit-pickers Amazon are a bunch of insufferable twats, it appears that I have to publish my Lovecraftian fiction on a different platform. At this point, I'll probably just sell the PDFs through Odysee. 

I always properly credit my sources. I never claim that characters such as Nyarlathotep are my creations. Furthermore, at this point, Lovecraft's work is in the public domain. He wrote the poem Nathicana in 1919 and the short story Nyarlathotep in 1920. That is over 100 years ago.

These works are done in appreciation of a longtime favorite author. 

Will I have to ask Edgar Allan Poe's permission to reference ravens in future stories?

I always feel like I'm selling my soul whenever I publish to Amazon anyway.

Ornery Owl is miffed

Free-use image from Pixabay

Figuring Things Out

 

Image by Homegrounds from Pixabay

A talented online friend, Jess DeWahls, recently asked how you know if you're burned out. I said that when the things that usually bring you happiness no longer do, that's one of the biggest signs that you're experiencing burnout.

Today, Jess posted this on her Patreon.

I need a break or I'm going to break.

I've always been the kind of person that always has to be doing, doing, doing.

I always have to be proving myself, if not to someone else than to myself.

Mostly to myself.

I've been burned out for years.

I've always taken care of everyone except me. 

Living in the middle of nowhere as my son and I do, we often have revealing conversations about life. Sometimes it's just a bitch-fest, but other times something important rises to the top.

My son has a friend who is responsible for taking care of family members. She asked him how you know if you're developing compassion fatigue. 

I had compassion fatigue before I got fired from my job as a home care nurse in 2017. I was burned out and not paying proper attention a lot of the time because I felt like hammered shit. My own health was in a precarious place. This led me to make a critical mistake that I regret to this day.

One of my patients was a pre-teen boy who had a rare x-linked disorder with frequent seizures. He couldn't walk or talk. He was a big kid. I had my tricks for moving and repositioning him. He was incontinent and sometimes he would let loose astounding amounts of urine. On those occasions, the whole bed would need to be changed.

I thought I had him positioned well on the bed while I gathered sheets and pads. I was wrong. He managed to roll out of the bed. I dived to catch him, but his leg struck the chair next to the bed where I sat during the night beside him.

For the next several days, he was obviously in pain, but he couldn't tell us what was wrong.

His mother finally managed to get him to the E.R. It turned out that he had a fractured femur.

I wasn't in trouble because accidents do happen in this line of work. However, I knew that I was nowhere near at my best. Had I been at my best, I would have made sure that there were pillows tucked around him and I would have made sure that the bed rail was up.

A few months later, I was taking care of another patient. I had a serious respiratory infection but was cajoled into going into work anyway since I'd contracted the infection from this patient.

I fell into a very deep sleep, and during that time the patient managed to wrap the oxygen hose leading to his tracheotomy port around himself. When I came out of that darkness, it was 20 minutes later than the time I noted before going under, and the patient's father was sitting on the side of the bed glaring at me.

I haven't been the same since that night. I feel like I had a small stroke. I was completely exhausted and sick as a proverbial dog. I was fired the next day and wasn't surprised. I wanted to scream at my supervisors "you people do this to us! You work your nurses to death and then fire us when the inevitable happens!" I was far from the first nurse that this had happened to.

It took me about three years to stop defining myself by my failure to work a normal job. It took me time to stop seeing myself as a failure because I had to go on disability. 

My father was a neurotic perfectionist. He never allowed himself to rest. He was always doing, doing, doing. He slept very poorly. He always felt like a failure. He had a major hemorrhagic stroke at 68 years old and was dead by 74 after several smaller strokes.

I don't want that to happen to me. Unlike my father, I do take medication for my hypertension even though antihypertensives are downers, and the last thing my depressive ass needs is to be more depressed.

Even when I started allowing myself to commit to the literary areas and no longer had to punch a time clock, I've still let myself fall into the trap of needing other people's approval or I'm a failure. When someone doesn't like what I write, it sends me into a tailspin. Sometimes even when it's a criticism of one of my reviews, as stupid as that sounds.

Recently, I found myself not caring about the worlds that mean so much to me and realized that I had to take a step back.

Do you know that there's a lot of crap on the Amazon Prime platform?

Yeah, there's some good stuff too, but there's a lot of crap.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to entirely accept the fact that I will never be popular, that most people are always going to find me weird and unlikable. Often when I get a bunch of criticism over a story it seems like most of the time it's people playing follow the leader and ganging up on someone who isn't part of the "in" crowd rather than that there's really anything wrong with the story itself. 

Also, these fuckers really don't know how to make hamburgers. The WEP team advises using the hamburger method when critiquing, where you wrap any negative critique in two positive ones. 

Nobody ever does that with my work when I enter the WEP grid, they just pick it to pieces. Hence, I probably will not be officially participating there anymore. I don't enjoy being nibbled to death by mice, and I don't like feeling like I'm back in high school.

I don't really care if anyone else would publish my work. I'll publish it myself. I just need to spend a day or two watching some godawful melodrama. Then, hopefully, I'll be good to go again.

Ornery Owl is Back to Being Ornery

Free use image from Pixabay

Midweek Madness Update

 

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

I've finally gotten through the MFRW Steam Hop posts and posted everyone's links to the August Roost Recommendations.

At this point, I'm thinking it would be best to go back to a weekly-ish format with the Roost Recommendations because the people at the end of the month are going to get the short end of the stick. 

I thought I had something to say, but I guess I really don't. I'm feeling burned out and discouraged right now. 

A Less Ornery Than Usual Owl Has Sighed Into the Void

Image by lumpi from Pixabay

No WEP

 

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I will not be participating in the WEP challenge this time.

If anyone who is participating stops by here, I hope you enjoy this round.

The good news is, now nobody will have to worry about the fact that I'm not Charlotte.

I could change my handle from Ornery Owl to avoid confusion, although I thought the part about "from Naughty Netherworld Press and Reader's Roost" already made the clarification.

However, I like the Ornery Owl handle, and somehow I think "bitter old hag whose resting bitch face never rests" seems a bit confrontational.

Therefore, I remain ornery and not Charlotte, even if I'm not actually an owl.

Ornery Owl (Still not Charlotte) Has Spoken

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery's Mid-Month Check-In

 Welcome to the second newsletter for August. I'm on a roll!

​How it started:

I'm gonna try to be all things to everyone!

How it's going:

Rather than shaming myself for falling short of that goal, I am objectively analyzing my own patterns and actions. This is genuinely a first for me. In my entire 56 years, I have never actually done this before. 

I notice that I get a pretty hearty selection of books for the Roost Recommendations (HTTP://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com) when I participate in MFRW Retweet Day with MFRW Author (https://mfrw.blogspot.com/). So no matter what else happens, the Roost Recommendations won't be a shameful flop. Of course I need to be sure to put my tweet link on the correct post or it won't see any action. Derp! 

For those who aren't currently participating in MFRW Retweet Day, I highly recommend MFRW Retweet Day. Follow the link to learn more. Also, tell everyone to sign up for the Naughty Netherworld Newsletter to get useful tips like this plus lots of useless blather--I mean, scintillating conversation.

I was intending to start my shares for the MFRW Steam Hop (http://mfrwsteam.blogspot.com/) on Thursday, but Other Shit happened. I can't plan my activities around The Perfect Month. I need to leave room for Other Shit, because Other Shit always happens including shit like my being inspired on my latest, soon-to-be-rejected WIP being created specifically for rejection from this year's IWSG anthology. (HTTP://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com)

I'm actually not being self-deprecating when I say this. My work isn't their cup of tea. I always create a piece for rejection anyway and self-publish it later. 

I didn't write an IWSG post this month. I'll get back to that next month.

I made myself a schedule to follow. I'll be revising it. I forgot that it existed until this moment. What people refer to as "senior moments" is the story of ADHD. I've been like this all my life. There were no significant changes when I hit 40 or 50.

When I was undergoing evaluation for disability, I learned that I don't have dementia and that my short-term memory is actually pretty good when I concentrate on something. When I focus on something else, all is forgotten except for those things that are critically important. I'm actually a lot better at knowing where to find my keys now than I was when I was in my 20s and 30s because I always put them in the same place!

Anyway, sometimes I have to let inspiration take precedence over the practical stuff. I'll get to the MFRW Steam comments today and add everyone's books and posts to the Roost Recommendations. I'll see what comes next after that.

I need to drive to Fort Collins (60 miles away) for a blood draw. I wanted to do it earlier in the month but I'm not going to go if I'm not positive that the lab has my orders, and they haven't been answering the phone or returning my calls. I asked my PA to email or snail mail me a copy of the lab orders. So far I've not received that either.

I may ask the PA if I should come in for the rest of the annual diabetic check and I can pick up the orders from her. I don't have the staff at her office do my draws because 

A) I have to do a modified fast for 12 hours where I can't eat anything containing fat. This is so I don't get a false high reading on my triglycerides. Since I'm diabetic, she realizes that I have to eat something so I don't pass out, so my glucose is going to be high when the labs are drawn. That's not the problem. The problem is I feel like hot garbage because foods with zero fat are notoriously unsatisfying. 

B) My veins are shit, so the MAs at the office usually can't get them. The people at the lab in Fort Collins are EMTs and paramedics. They're proficient at dealing with terrible veins. 

In summary, I'm not going to drive 125 miles to the doctor's office while feeling like absolute crap and needing to pee so bad I can taste it because I have to drink massive amounts of liquid to plump up my garbage veins, only to get to the doctor's office and have to endure multiple failed attempts to get blood from a turnip. 

The other problem in this equation is that the post office has been returning my mail recently, so who knows if the lab orders will get to me or not. If they aren't here today, I'll contact the office and let them know.

This is the story of my stupid life. I bet you're glad you're not me. I wouldn't be me either if I had a choice.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Readers Roost: Roost Recommendations August 2021

Readers Roost: Roost Recommendations August 2021:   I've made a few changes to my system. Hopefully, the sailing will be a bit smoother this month.

I've started working on this month's Roost Recommendations and will endeavor to add books from the blog hops that I participate in over the course of the month. 

I would like to try and make the blog hops work for me, and in turn, I want to work for them. Indie and small press authors have a difficult time getting noticed. The Roost Recommendations are my small way of giving back. Maybe nobody will ever be into my books, but if they pick up some books written by my author acquaintances, that will be good too.

I've decided to divide my shares into four major categories: nonfiction, erotica, Team Netherworld Creations, and poetry.

On tap for this week, we have the MFRW Steam Hop where yours truly is sharing a chapter from Yesterday's Desire, the eighth book in the hot Cloned Heat series. The second week of the month is Erotica Week, so you can expect my shares to be sizzling. 

If that sort of thing really is not your bag, Baby, avoid Naughty Netherworld Press on the second week of the month. If, on the other hand, that sort of thing really is your bag, Baby, then welcome and enjoy!

~Ornery Owl (Still not Charlotte no matter how much you wish I was) Has Spoken~

Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Yesterday's Desire is FREE From #MFRWHooks #MFRWSteam #MFRWAuthor #8Sunday #RainbowSnippets #SnipSun

 

Genre:

M/M erotica, sci-fi

Length:

3000 words (approximate)

Mature Content Advisory:

Although this post isn't terribly explicit, it technically reaches a Bushfire Out of Control rating on the Naughty Scale. If you would prefer to avoid out-of-control bushfires and bawdy boys-only erotic games, this post should be given a pass. On the other hand, if that sort of thing really is your bag, Baby, c'mon in and stay awhile!

The story that this excerpt is taken from reaches Erotic Supernova levels and is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Blurb

The mysterious monks of Temple Bratuns have penetrated the shadows of Peregrine Varga’s past, but they need to go deeper still, fully opening the sealed doors of the troubled roughneck’s mind. Only by confronting his past can Peregrine’s life truly become his own.\

Short Snippet

With the refractory period following his intense orgasm at the hands of Brother Mateus subsiding, Peregrine smiled blissfully and reached out his arms as if to embrace his robust Romeo. Brother Mateus, however, was no naïve neophyte. He saw the predatory gleam in Peregrine’s eyes and moved away before the infected roughneck had a chance to sink his emerging fangs into the monk’s flesh.

“Tut tut, meu delicioso pedaço¹,” Brother Mateus chided. “I have no desire to become enslaved to a sirene du mer through your tainted bite. Now, tell me truthfully, is it really, as your delightful bosom companion Senhor Iker refers to him, the salty little fucker who is controlling your mind, or is it in fact the memory of one Master Léandre Anandi Bruhn?”

Intermission

If all you wanted was an appetizer, you're done! Scroll down to see how to grab a copy of this spicy work for yourself, if you're so inclined. However, if you're still hungry, you are welcome to stick around for the main course!

Extended Snippet

Peregrine snarled, his eyes flashing red, then turning black as the skies over a stormy sea. The other monks restrained the raging roughneck, returning him to the bondage bench and securing him in a kneeling position.

“Bring the cooling salve,” Brother Laocoön ordered.

Iker opened his mouth to speak but the commanding friar touched a finger to his lips.

“On my say-so, meu caro amigo,” he advised. “So our methods will have the strongest impact for both you e seu amor.⁴”

Iker’s cheeks flushed, but if Brother Laocoön noticed, he said nothing. He simply led Iker to Brother Mateus.

Although Iker heard the senior monk’s voice, his attention was drawn by Peregrine’s behavior and the animal grunts and snarls emerging from his friend’s lips as the monks massaged his pulsating muscles with icy, invigorating salve.

“I cannot stress strongly enough the key role that you play in your friend’s potential salvation, meu delicioso companheiro,⁵” Brother Mateus advised as he strode to the bondage bench where Peregrine wantonly groaned and writhed under the skillful ministrations of the erotic clergy. “For you see, when Brother Saiful was so lusciously pleasing you, he was not only experiencing a thrilling ride, but he was also opening you to releasing the secrets of your subconscious mind. Had you been the one bitten, your transformation would have been even more difficult to manage than your lover’s, for your secret shame runs even deeper.”

“Those days are long forgotten…” Iker protested.

The senior monk silenced him with a kiss.

“Denial will not save su menino amante.⁶ Only by working together can we hope to rescue him. I ask you now to help me prepare for a deeper probing into the mind and body of the dangerously delicious Peregrine, meu gracioso servo.⁷”

“I’m ready to do whatever you ask, Brother Mateus,” Iker promised.

Buy Links

Always free from Kindle Unlimited.

Free to own from August 10 - August 14.

Regular price 99 cents.

https://bit.ly/CHVIIIAZ

This story is also available as a PDF for my patrons at any level, starting at just a buck a month.  https://www.patreon.com/posts/51984050

You can purchase all eight hot Cloned Heat Cliffhangers for your erotica collection, or read them free with Kindle Unlimited. 

https://amzn.to/31Lwch2

Ornery Thoughts (Contains Swearing and Mild Peril)

I'm still ironing out the routine with Readers Roost. (http://bit.ly/ReadersRoost) July was a complete cluster-fuck and August is shaping up to be at least a minor cluster-fuck. All of these cluster-fucks are cutting into the things I love to do. 

The organized among you probably think that I am the biggest disaster to befall the planet, and I probably am. If you know someone like me who always seems to be running around like a chicken with their head cut off, please be patient with them. The likelihood is that they have ADHD like I do. 

If I had learned coping and management skills at a young age, I wouldn't be having to try and teach them to myself now. I tend not to be very nice to myself when something I do doesn't work out as I'd hoped and sometimes this leads to a psychological crash that can last anywhere from a day or two to a couple of weeks.

There's so much that I want to do and even if I were to do it all, I'd have people telling me that I've failed to do something else, probably something involving making myself pretty, appearing young even if though I'm not, and becoming thin. None of those things are ever going to happen barring either a miracle or a disaster, and at this stage of the game, I honestly don't understand why people place so much value on them. What one does should be more important than what one looks like--always.

Let's Go To the Hops

http://mfrwbookhooks.blogspot.com/

https://mfrw.blogspot.com/

http://mfrwsteam.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets

https://saturdayspankings.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/groups/SnippetSunday

http://wewriwa.blogspot.com/

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld.

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. Odysee’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on Odysee. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Want more?

Get it here!

http://bit.ly/morennp

Naughty Netherworld News Presents: New Publishing Tricks

 Well, what do ya know? It's only been two weeks since I last published a newsletter! Go me!

With Reedsy deciding to add a fee to their weekly contest, I will slowly be pulling my material off their platform. I really never expected to win the contest anyway, I was mainly using the prompts as tools to help me adhere to a deadline. I will be publishing the material to Kindle Vella. 

Here's what's cool about Kindle Vella:

Readers get the first three episodes of a given serial for free. For authors, this hopefully means that readers will be interested in continuing to read their work following the first three episodes.

The thing that sucks about Kindle Vella is that it's open to US residents only on both the author and reader platforms. So I also intend to keep the stories available elsewhere. I'll probably continue to make them available on Odysee and on my Patreon, although heaven only knows that I haven't had much success growing an audience on either of those. So I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do there. I guess I'll just fly by the seat of my pants like I always do while flinging things at the wall and seeing what sticks.

This also means that I may be sharing weekly material on some of the blog hops again. For the foreseeable future, I'll continue making the first chapter of the Cloned Heat series available for the MFRW Steam Hop/MFRW Author week. For the rest of the month, I'll share another piece of work. I guarantee that I will also continue to be a piece of work.

Cloned Heat is due to wrap at the end of the year. I'm thinking of starting a new erotica series to be published on Kindle Vella. The serial that I just started is Lovecraftian sci-fi fantasy. It contains no explicit erotica.

I'm still ironing out the details with the Roost Recommendations posts. 

I wonder what it would be like to be one of those people from Planet Organized. Do people from Planet Organized tend to feel like they have a noose around their neck and a vicious taskmaster screaming at them to get 50 different things done at once? Because that's how I feel most of the time.

Overall, I'm doing a bit better. I keep doing this stuff because I love it, but sometimes it gets discouraging that none of it ever seems to amount to a hill of beans.

See you at the Hops.

​If you enjoy this quirky newsletter, please share it.

You can also sign up here:

http://bit.ly/NaughtyNetherworldNews

Ornery Owl Has Spoken

Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors

Good Stuff From Grover: Sunday Dinner at the Grover Hotel: Slow Cooker Eye...

Good Stuff From Grover: Sunday Dinner at the Grover Hotel: Slow Cooker Eye...:   Get the Instant Pot delivered to your door with Amazon. https://amzn.to/3bOGxOC  (Currently $89) Disclosure: This post contains affiliate ...

It's been way too long since I published a Sunday Dinner post. Today, Ornery Owl shares how to turn an inexpensive roast into a delicious dinner with a few simple tricks.