Monthly Archives: October 2018

My Star Trek fantasies

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Being a writer starts out with having fantasies— making up stories in your head. At first, we do it for our own amusement. It’s only later that we decide to write down some of our fantasies and become Real Writers.
The biggest influence on my early making-up-stories was the original Star Trek series. As a kid, I often went on long walks through my neighborhood or a nearby woods, making up a Star Trek story all the time. Of course, these stories were silly. If I had written any down, they would be embarrassing. Kids’ fantasies are like that.
Since I was a big Star Trek fan, I watched the episodes over and over, and internalized the rules of that particular science fiction universe. I loyally ignored the weird, contradictory stuff- like the fact that the Enterprise had an actual chapel but no chaplain or even visiting priests, pastors or rabbis. Over the years of making up stories, my Star Trek stories became better. Though they also became less like the Official Star Trek canon and more like what I wished Star Trek was like.
At a certain point in my later childhood, I decided I was a general science fiction fan and tried to read other science fiction. Didn’t always have luck finding stuff I liked. I remember one story where a space traveller discovered that the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that destroyed an inhabited planetary system. And then there was The Cold Equations, where the stowaway girl-character I thought of as the main character has to be killed to save other lives.
I eventually discovered stories I did like. Some, like the Darkover series by She Who Must Not Be Named, I can no longer bear to read when I discovered unpleasant realities about the author in a book written by her daughter, Moira Greyland. So I had to find other authors. Like Declan Finn, Karina Fabian, Daniella Bova and Jill Williamson.
But my mental Star Trek stories have persisted all these years. I used to have plans to write one of those Star Trek novels from Pocket Books. I used to read and collect them compulsively. But for a few years I didn’t buy new ones due to a bookstore shortage in my area. I recently bought a new Star Trek novel and saw that the series had been utterly ruined. The novel showed what should have been an exciting action sequence. But a character was wasting time worrying about what pronoun she should use while THINKING about unisexual aliens— she chose a newly invented ‘alternative’ pronoun. I chose not to waste my money on such drivel again. Real action heroes don’t waste time worrying about THINKING the wrong thing.
Since I’ve been aware for years that my mental stories now contain a lot of original content— persistent characters who never appear in Star Trek, an interplanetary system that’s nothing like the United Federation of Planets, a space fleet that is not taxpayer supported but has to support itself by hauling trade goods from planet to planet….. I’ve been working for some years on creating an original setting and character group that I can use as a replacement for my unoriginal Star Trek stuff so I can write an original space opera novel or series.
I think that many of use writers are working through something similar. We have long connections to other people’s fiction that stimulates our own creative side. And then we must cut the cord and create something original to take its place, We have to think about what it is about those other people’s fiction that inspires us, and what parts we don’t like so much or that we could replace with something we like better. And then we have to take that flood of ideas we have and make them consistent. For example, if Christians are widely persecuted in your universe, you can’t have Christian leaders wielding great power without explanation. Perhaps you can have persecution in most places and Christians-with-power in others.
The thing to remember is that your writing is first about YOU. What you like, what stimulates your imagination to produce ever-more ideas. You have to shape your ideas so that there are at least some groups of readers who can enjoy your work, but you shouldn’t be writing stuff you can’t stand. You probably can’t do that over the long term, and even if you can, you won’t enjoy it.
Connect with me on social media:
I recommend that writers be on more than one of these:
Gab will be back up on the weekend, it is estimated.

How to use Free Speech social media like Gab

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Freedom of speech. A lot of people don’t really believe in it any more. They want their social media cleared of ‘hate speech’— which often includes conservative speech, and quoting Bible verses about homosexuality. But social media can’t afford to have a human evaluator (censor) read through every potential post before it gets actually posted. And so many criminals like the synagogue shooter have Twitter accounts, and for some reason in spite of Twitter’s anti-hate policy he got to stay there— where some of my conservative friends got suspended or banned.
If you have heard media reports about the social media Gab, you have probably been lied to. Gab is not a racist/antisemite haven— I’ve SEEN sites that are racist/antisemite havens when I was researching extremists for a writing project. Gab is a FREE SPEECH oriented social media. I got on it when some conservative-libertarian writer friends of mine recommended it. On Gab I have seen antisemites, but I have also seen Jewish people and pro-Israel people. I have seen ‘racialists’ [actual racists who admit they are racist] and liberals and members of the US Republican party— the party that freed the Black slaves. I’ve seen smutty naked posts and devout Christian clean posts. That’s what FREE SPEECH is about— people are free to speak their OWN minds, not just reflect what other people think is right.
NOW: I am sure there are some of you who presume that I am racist, antisemitic or ‘ALT-RIGHT’ myself. I don’t like to hear racialist speech because I have Ottawa Indian ancestry and I wouldn’t be pure enough for that type. As a Christian, I don’t care for antisemitic remarks because my personal Lord and Savior is a Jewish dude! As for ALT-RIGHT, the few people I know who use that as a self-description don’t mean it the way the media does. I’d need way more information before I personally would demonize the ALT-RIGHT. And as for the real bad guys like Neo-Nazis— will taking away their FREE SPEECH make them into nicer people? Are they better off only speaking their mind in secret, hidden Nazi forums? Or will they become better people if they are free to interact with the rest of us? I despise most of what such people say, but as the saying goes, I will defend to my death their FREE SPEECH rights to say it.

Muting and Blocking

How do you use a FREE SPEECH social media like Gab? The first thing is to learn how to mute or block other users. Gab makes it easy. I routinely block people who mostly post photos of private parts. I don’t necessarily bother to block all Neo-Nazis. If they are in the Gab topics or groups I use, I may well correct the things they say! On a Christian Gab topic, an antisemite blamed ‘the Jews’ for the martyrdom of the Apostles. I pointed out that Jesus and his Apostles WERE Jewish people, and that early martyrs got persecuted by the Romans as well as local Jewish authorities. Gab went down temporarily not long after I posted that so I don’t know if he responded. If he persistently annoyed me, I would have blocked.
I know that a lot of us are scared of the consequences of free speech. We get told in the media daily that wrongspeech causes ‘hate crimes.’ But they aren’t too worried when left-wing media personalities literally call for the assassination of the current US president! It’s only wrongspeech that won’t vote for them that worries them. The fact is that unless there is FREE SPEECH, none of us is safe. Facebook and Twitter, social media which are known for taking down alleged hate, takes down a lot of innocent conservative and Christian posts, but if you are conservative and someone on Facebook tells you essentially to eat sh-t and die, and steals your profile picture to do it, Facebook won’t do dick about it. I have a conservative FB page about man-woman marriage, and I’ve been told I’m crazy, a liar, a fraud, and that my (now dead) disabled kitten was ugly— with a lot of dirty words mixed in to the insults. I really think the only reason that page hasn’t been taken down yet is that I admit I have same-sex attraction (‘gay’ or ‘ex-gay’ identity) and though I also admit I’m chaste, I might still be a protected ‘minority’ and that protects me from FB persecution.
The lesson of the Gab takedown is that we need to defend FREE SPEECH, and we need to protect those social media that don’t ban alleged ‘haters’ and that really allow free speech. If you want a social media presence, as writers and bloggers need to survive these days, you need multiple social media. Any social media could arbitrarily ban you, any social media that advocates for FREE SPEECH can be taken down overnight. You need a backup, and, yeah, that means more social media work. But we can’t afford to put all our social media eggs in one basket.
Currently, Gab is still transitioning to a new hosting provider after widespread attacks on that social media. Twitter, however, is not under immediate threat in spite of the fact that the synagogue shooter had a Twitter account. The Gab service does still have a Twitter account, so you can follow that account to be updated as to when Gab gets up again. It’s also an opportunity to get Gab’s point of view unfiltered by the biases of the news media.
I recommend that once Gab gets back up, you prayerfully consider starting an account there, just to show your belief in FREE SPEECH. If you do believe in it. You don’t have to actively use Gab a lot. Just try it. Get to know the reality of it. It does not have the wide user base of the censorship media like Facebook and Twitter, but it does have a band of very loyal users. Once Gab is back up, I plan to research an article on how to use Gab more effectively.
Check it to see if Gab has gone back up yet. And when it is, feel free to ‘friend’ me there. I ‘friend’ back most accounts without naked stuff or swastikas.
 
There is a group on MeWe for stranded Gab users: https://mewe.com/group/5bd5abc24b3f5711bb37a60b

 

Bible Verses against #MarriageEquality

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Don’t you just hate propaganda terms like ‘marriage equality’ and ‘the Jewish problem?’ It’s just a way to hide what you are really talking about— eliminating marriage or eliminating Jews, in those cases.
The campaign to replace marriage with ‘marriage equality’ doesn’t like to mention the fact that it will require essentially closing down all Bible-believing churches (and synagogues) lest they read ‘hate speech’ off the pages of the Bible. I honestly believe that many of the Left-wing politicians preaching ‘marriage equality’ don’t give a fig for gay people. They just want to shut down their rival for power— the Church.
A new generation is growing up that hasn’t learned the teachings of the Church or of the Bible. They preach odd stuff like the idea that if Jesus didn’t personally say ‘No Gay marriage’ then the fact that the Bible speaks out against homosexual behaviors and lusts does not count. Here is what Jesus has to say about that bad theology: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Matthew 5:17 KJV
Here are some verses to consider when making up your mind whether to conform to progressive ideology on #MarriageEquality:
“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” Romans 1: 26-28 KJV
If we conform to the world and accept same-sex marriage, rejecting God’s word, will we be given over to a ‘reprobate mind?’
“Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Jude 1:7 KJV
The world calls sins of the flesh ‘sexual liberation,’ but God takes such sins seriously.
 
“Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine.” 1 Timothy 1:9-10 KJV
Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, but we are not called to live in our sins. Murders, unchastity, homosexuality and lying are not a part of a Christian life.
 
“Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” 1 Cor. 7:2 KJV
Fornication is a sexual sin which includes any sexual act outside of a valid man-woman marriage. Homosexual relations and heterosexual adultery are both forbidden.
 
“Know yet not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 KJV
Effeminate (Strong’s #3120, Greek) means effeminate, soft, a catamite. A man who dressed as a woman to lure men into homosexual behavior. Roman culture distinguished between the effeminate man who took the woman’s role in sex, and the ‘manly’ man who took the masculine role in homosexual sex, and who was not considered a homosexual person. The Bible condemns both types of homosexual behaviour along with fornication drunkenness, theft and other sins. And it says ‘such were some of you!’ So it means people with gay/homosexual attractions, even with a long history of gay sex, can be saved if they repent, just like the drunks and the thieves can be saved if they repent.
 
“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is abomination.” Leviticus 18:22
It does not say that it is wrong to ‘be’ homosexual or to be tempted by homosexual relationships. It’s all about what you do. God understands that some of us are tempted by same-sex relationships.
 
“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Leviticus 20:13
This seems harsh, but God in Leviticus was teaching the people the way to be holy. God teaches us right from wrong, but when Man sins, God comes to earth as Jesus Christ to die on the Cross so we don’t have to suffer eternal death for our sins. Praise the Lord!
 
NOTE: if you feel you are ‘Gay’ or are troubled by attractions to persons of the same-sex, you are not condemned by God for those feelings! Look at 1 Corinthians 11— And such were some of you. You can overcome Gay feelings and be forgiven for Gay-related sins. The Church has a ministry, Courage International, to help people with Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) deal with this issue. I have Same-Sex Attraction myself (I don’t use the terms Gay or Lesbian any more since Courage Int. discourages it) and the people I met through the Courage FB group have helped me have hope. Jesus never gave up on me when I was a Lesbian looking for love, when I gave up on Christianity and became a neopagan for years. He still brought me back to reality and to the Catholic Church (I was raised Protestant.) God is Good!
SECOND NOTE: If you tweet these Bible verses you might get banned from Twitter. I’m tweeting them anyway, but I’m on Gab and MeWe as well so I can’t get wholly shut down. I hope.

 

Learn to use MeWe, part 1

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What is MeWe, anyway? It’s a new social media which is an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. Why do people even want that? Because Facebook and Twitter are run by people who find it weird and suspicious when people don’t share their viewpoint and their politics.
I’ve known a lot of conservative and Christian people who have been unfairly banned or suspended by Facebook or Twitter. Often it’s for some minor thing. Or they never tell you why you are in trouble at all. I’ve heard of one FB user who even got his post deleted because he mentioned he was on MeWe and used the hashtag #MeWe.
On the other hand, what happens if you are conservative or Christian on FB and someone bullies you? I had some left-wingers steal my picture from my pro-traditional-marriage page, and use it for a post on their FB page which essentially told me to eat sh-t and die. I reported that FB page, which did nothing but personally harass conservatives. Nothing got done about it.
Now, I know a lot of people get tired of being told that they have to be on different social media. But when your social media is failing you, and you may lose your account unfairly, you need an alternative and you need to get started NOW, and not wait until you are in trouble with Facebook just when your new book comes out, or when you have a great blog post that needs promoting.

Starting Your Account

Open an account on MeWe. You will need a profile picture and a cover photo, just like for setting up on Facebook or Twitter. I used the same ones as I use for Facebook. I use my name: nissaannakindt as my ID there. If you are a writer and trying to gain a platform, use your author name, real or pen name. Use a profile picture of your actual face. On the other hand, if you are a blogger and advocate for your point-of-view under a patently false name (‘The Deplorable Guy’ or ‘Socialist Nancy P.’ or whatever) use that name. Whatever name you need to build a platform for.
Once you have an account, you will need contacts: that is, friends or followers on the site. How do you get contacts? You recruit them from the people you already know from FB and Twitter. Take these steps to get started with contacts:
  1. Use your list of email addresses. Send an email to your email-connected friends and invite them over to MeWe.
  2. Tweet about it! Tell your Twitter followers you are on MeWe and why, and give the link to your profile page on MeWe. Use the hashtag #MeWe when you do this. Do it more than once.
  3. Tell your Facebook friends about it. DON’T use the hashtag #MeWe on FB because they do take posts down for that ‘sin.’ If you have other pages on Facebook, make a post about MeWe there as well. Again, make posts like this more than once.
  4. Add your MeWe profile’s link to your pages on various social media and to your blog or web page.
  5. Write a blog post about MeWe— whatever aspect of MeWe you like. Include a link to your profile page on MeWe and invite your readers to become your contacts.
  6. Become active on MeWe: when you write a blog post, share it on MeWe. Post pictures of your cats on MeWe. Check your MeWe page regularly like you do your FB and Twitter. Comment on stuff. Don’t be quick to give up on MeWe because you don’t know many people there yet. It takes time.
  7. Set Goals! At first, when you start out, make your goal getting 10 new contacts. Then 20, 30 and so on. It’s like on FB and Twitter— you need to make ‘friends’ on the new site or you are just talking to yourself.
Now, don’t expect all of your friends to jump on the MeWe bandwagon and join you there! Be low-key about it. They may find their own reasons to join in a few weeks or months. In fact, spending time on MeWe may be a bit of a gamble for you. It may be the coming thing, and it may not.
The important thing for the blogger or writer who wants to use social media to build a platform is to avoid being in the FB/Twitter rut. You need more social media than just those two! And if you are at risk for ‘offending’ the gods of Facebook or Twitter by failing to conform to Left-wing political agendas, you may someday really need to be on alternative social media.
Feel free to request to become my contact on MeWe. I will accept requests so long as they are not from porn-filled accounts. I will be your guide— or maybe you will be mine— through the unexplored wilderness of MeWe. This is my profile page: mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt
Part 2: Joining MeWe groups— coming soon!

 

Women never die from botched adoptions

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I have been reading about yet another case where an abortionist has killed a woman in a botched abortion. It’s a common story. There is even a movie about it: the Gosnell movie about serial killer abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

If you are connected with the prolife movement online, you hear these stories all the time. But you know what I never hear? I’ve never heard a single story where a woman or girl has died from a botched adoption. 

Adoption is the unspeakable option to the point that when people are advocating for the kill-babies-by-abortion movement, they never mention that option. It’s either abort right now for a big fee at our Planned Parenthood clinic, or have the baby and quit school and be a single mom. What happened to the adoption option?

Adoption is the safe option. Why don’t we speak about this? Having an abortion is like smoking a cigarette (tobacco or other,) mainlining heroin, or eating sugar right from the bag by the tablespoonful. It’s a health risk we don’t have to take!

It’s a win-win situation. You get a loving home for your baby, you get to finish school and live your life, and you have the option of making yourself available when the kid grows up and having a relationship with the kid. And you don’t have to change a single diaper!

It’s becoming clearer to me that the feminism/pro-abort movement isn’t about helping women, it’s about making money for abortion clinic chains like Planned Parenthood. Because if you cared about the actual women/girls and their physical and mental health, you would at least not ban mention of the adoption possibility.

Are you on MeWe or ‘gab’? Connect with me there:

My MeWe profile: mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt

My MeWe pro-marriage (Man + Woman + Marriage) group: https://mewe.com/join/defendtradmarriage-biologytheology

My ‘gab’ page: https://gab.com/nissalovescats

Coming soon: my personal tutorial on how to use MeWe.

Getting bullied over the hashtag #womenagainstfeminism

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OK, maybe I’m just weird. But I hate being expected to be a feminist and love feminism just because I have female genitals. I mean, are guys expected to be ‘masculinists’ and vote for male candidates when they hate those candidates’ policies? Unfair!

On Twitter, I used the #womenagainstfeminism hashtag once, and boy did that unleash the trolls. One woman roared that women like me ought not be allowed to vote. Sorry, I’m going to keep my vote– and I thought feminists were in favor of votes for women. But maybe they want to limit that to FEMINIST women— so women will not have equality unless they support the full feminist bill of goods, including abortion and including biological males calling themselves ‘transgender’ and being allowed to compete in women’s sports. (If ‘transgender’ men can’t compete with other men in sports, maybe they should have a sports classification for themselves. Because some biological women want to have women’s sports for some reason.)

I don’t understand people like that. If I disagree with people on Twitter I usually ignore them or unfollow them. Once in a great while I do express an opinion, but I try to be polite. Except when I’m dealing with a bullying ‘athiest’ I do correct spelling!

If you are on Twitter and you want attention, do try the hashtag #womenagainstfeminism . It ticks off all the right (Left?) people!

My Twitter page: @nissalovescats

My MeWe page: https://mewe.com/profile/5bb89aaca40f3041e094d560

My (neglected) ‘gab’ page: https://gab.ai/nissalovescats

I do intend to use that ‘forbidden’ hashtag more often. Because of the ‘speaking truth to power’ thing. And because I no longer care if I get banned from Twitter.

Science-fictional languages & Esperanto

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In older science fiction, it was assumed that future people of different cultures would speak to one another in Esperanto, or in a fictionalized version of it. Esperanto is a real-world invented language created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, which is highly simplified, and can be learned by an English-speaker in about 1/10th the time it would take an English-speaker to learn French. It is also a language which largely lacks idioms which cannot be literally translated, such as saying ‘I am blue’ in English to mean ‘I am sad.’ (The English translation of the German sci-fi series, Perry Rhodan, has future slang terms with Esperanto roots, even though that’s not in the original German text.)
In early science fiction, Esperanto was new linguistic technology which seemed to scream ‘futuristic.’ That impression has changed, in large part because so many people on the planet don’t want to have to learn the international language Esperanto when they have already learned Chinese, Arabic, Spanish or English as their international language. It is commonly said that Esperanto has ‘failed.’ But since it has gone from just-an-idea with one speaker, Dr. Zamenhof, in 1887 to a language estimated to have 2-4 million speakers and maybe more who could recognize the language and communicate in it on a basic level if they had to.
A later idea of how future people would solve the interplanetary language problem was a ‘universal translator’ device like used on Star Trek. The Star Trek device could start translating without hearing a word of a new alien tongue, as far as we could see on the show. But in the real world, translation by computer is hard. There are always mistakes. Would YOU like to create a treaty with the Klingons using only a ‘universal translator,’ or would you opt for using bilingual beings as translators so they could catch the mistakes and ambiguities?
There has also been the idea that in the future, English or a version of English will be the interplanetary universal language. On Earth, our experience has been that a country with great military and economic power can induce foreign peoples of less power to learn their language, as the British Empire spread English and English-learning around the world. But our experience on Earth has also been that the most popular international language doesn’t stay so popular forever. Greek was an international language in the ancient world, and was learned by educated persons in many nations from Egypt to Israel to Rome. As Greek national power waned and Roman power grew, Latin became an international language. It continued to be an international language for a long time because the Church was centered in Rome, and the Catholic Church still uses Latin for international communications purposes. (There used to be an ATM machine in the Vatican with Latin instructions!) Later French became the language of diplomacy, and only later did English start being used for international purposes. In the future with the growing power of China and of the Muslim world, perhaps Mandarin Chinese or Arabic may have a turn at being the most popular international language.
Adopting a created language like Esperanto is a different sort of thing. It does not belong to any one nation on Earth, and it is highly unlikely that if Esperanto moves out into the interplanetary world that any Esperanto-speakers will claim it belongs particularly to Earth. Like other created international languages, it belongs to the people who have taken the trouble to learn it in order to communicate better with others. It may seem that Esperanto or other similar languages moving into common use would require loads of people (and space aliens) to become more idealistic. But actually, it is pragmatic. I learned Esperanto well enough to read it by spending 2 month studying a book on it in my spare time while I was in college. This is a short investment in time as language-learning goes. Imagine how an international or interplanetary project would be enhanced by asking (or ordering) the participants to spend the small amount of time it would take to learn to communicate with others in Esperanto.
Esperanto is not the first created language ever made as an international language. There were many such projects before Esperanto, such as Universalglot or Volapuk. Volapuk actually had a following and language clubs at one time! After Esperanto, there were languages such as Ido (an Esperanto dialect) and Interlingua. There are also languages like Slovio, a pan-Slavic language.
In the future, a new international or interplanetary language could arise that is no relation to Esperanto, but has similarities in easy of learning. It’s possible that English speakers might meld English word roots with a simplified, Esperanto-like spelling system and grammar to create a new language easy for those who already speak English as a first or second language. Or Chinese speakers, or Arabic speakers. Now that Esperanto and other simplified languages have been created, the principles are available to anyone.
What about Klingon for an international language on real-world Earth? There used to be internet rumors of how an English-speaking Star Trek fan had communicated with a Japanese Star Trek fan in Klingon. As a massive fan of Star Trek, I looked into that. I wanted to translate a few simple sentences into Klingon. But I found that Klingon had no words for the key words in my sentences, like ‘cat’ and ‘rat.’ And no mechanism for creating new words, which Esperanto has. And since Klingon is the intellectual property of Paramount Pictures, who hired the man who made up the Klingon language, we really can’t use it for an international language without permission. So an Esperanto club in Poland can’t transfer its loyalty to Klingon as an international language, as Volapuk clubs transferred their loyalty to Esperanto once Esperanto was invented, because Klingon isn’t in the public domain!
As writers, if we like the interplanetary-language concept as a plot device, we are free to create our own interplanetary language— language inventing is a legit hobby now and there are web sites that may help you— or you can used Esperanto (or Volapuk or Universalglot) as a pre-fab language in your work. Since they are international languages meant for use, they were all ‘born’ in the public domain, and are old enough that they would be in the public domain now anyway.
Esperanto is the best developed international language. There are free Esperanto learning websites and cell phone apps like Duolingo, there are still a few Esperanto shortwave broadcasts, and even more broadcasts in Esperanto on internet radio— including one on Vatican radio. Also, the Bible has been available in Esperanto from early on. The language’s creator, Zamenhof, was a Polish Jew and spoke Hebrew as well as many other languages, and he translated the Old Testament. Here is a sample: ‘En la komenco Dio kreis la chielon kaj la teron.’ [Genesis 1:1]  The New Testament was translated by the British Bible society, and the Deuterocanonical books— the books in Catholic Bibles that modern Jewish and Protestant Bibles don’t have— are also now available. So the Esperanto Bible— especially the Zamenhof-translated Old Testament— is a treasure trove of grammatically proper Esperanto stuff to quote.
I might warn other language geeks: don’t give out long solid blocks of text in Esperanto or your own fictional language or any language other than English (or whatever other language you are writing in.) It will confuse or annoy many readers, while using a word or phrase or two may be able to be ignored by people who don’t like that sort of thing. Sometimes, less is more!
Story prompts:
  1. Imagine a futuristic story in which language diversity is a problem. How will your characters solve the problem? How will they get others to agree to their solution? What will be the drawbacks and benefits of the solution your characters choose?
  2. A major corporation builds a massive factory or mine or something, and has to get workers from many linguistic groups. The corporation hires linguists to create a simple language for the corporation workers to use with one another. Over time, children are born from ‘mixed marriages’ among the workers who use the (copyrighted) corporation-owned language as their primary or only language— and they can’t leave to work for other corporations because they cannot use their native language without corporate permission!
  3. Your characters believe that Esperanto (or another interplanetary language) is evil and threatens the survival of other languages and their related cultures. Languages like Chinese and English and German are dying out the way American Indian languages are dying today (many Indian languages in the US have only a handful of elderly speakers left alive right now— when they die, the language is dead, without any native speakers.)

Teach Yourself Esperanto book

Esperanto-English dictionary

Wattpad Readers don’t want a ‘Free Sample’

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A lot of us authors are attracted by Wattpad as social media. It’s a social media full of actual readers, after all. In fact the site has little to offer people who neither read or write. But some of the things we make think of to do at first won’t really fly with the Wattpad reader community.
I know of a couple of Indie authors who have discovered Wattpad, and who have posted a couple of chapters of their self-published work as a ‘free sample,’ and sit back and wait for sales of the full book to roll in. And it doesn’t happen. Because the authors involved do not understand the Wattpad community correctly.
I don’t understand Wattpad natively myself. I have read The Writer’s Guide to Wattpad which was published by Writer’s Digest books, and have been trying to master and apply the principals to my Wattpad life.
One thing about Wattpad is that the readers are accustomed to reading stories there for free. They resent outside-of-Wattpad authors who give just a taste of their novels and then want them to buy. Very many Wattpadders are teens, and many don’t actually have much money for book-buying. They want to find Wattpad stories that are either completed or that are regularly being updated and are likely to become finished. They view ‘free-samples’ of stories as being just ads for books they probably won’t want.
If Wattpad won’t give you loads of sales for your Indie novel, what good is it? First, it’s a way to get feedback on your work. Much of the feedback will be of no use to you, because it will be coming either from trolls, from the terminally politically correct who want to admonish you for alleged violation of the politically correct rules, or from teens who don’t know much about writing yet. But you can judge which of your book’s chapters works best by the number of readers who actually read it or vote on it, and you may find out a persistent problem when multiple readers grouse about the same thing.
Second, if you participate in Wattpad, first by reading the works of others, and then by adding your own work there, you will in time develop some Wattpad ‘groupies’ who like your work and will read what you write. They may not buy your works outside of Wattpad yet, but they will likely do other things to help you out once they have read a few of your works and liked them. First they will start sharing your Wattpad work both among their Wattpad friends, and over their social media accounts. If you are really generous in sharing stories on Wattpad, you may develop Wattpad fans who will also share the launch of your real-world Indie work on their social media accounts as well.
Another gift of Wattpad is that it is a community with vast numbers of young people. Your work may not please the majority of young people, but the ones who are attracted to your work add some youth to your fan base. Personally I don’t care whether my readers are 9 years old or 99, but I must admit that the 9 year old reader is more likely to keep reading my work a decade from now.
Serialized stories, like old-time movie serials, have an appeal on Wattpad. I don’t mean stories you update once in a blue moon, but the ones you update on a regular schedule once or twice a week. If you have a good novella you are willing to publish on Wattpad, tap into this desire by adding sections to it weekly, rather than dumping the whole thing on Wattpad as quickly as possible. This can build excitement. Provided your story is exciting in some way.
Some Wattpadders don’t often start Wattpad stories that are not yet finished. That means after your story is all posted to the end, you will possibly gain new readers for it. That’s why you want to check in with Wattpad several times a week to check for new comments. Responding to a sincere and kindly meant comment may win over a new reader into your Wattpad fan base. (Ignoring the mean comments is also an important skill.)
My main reason for doing Wattpad is that I’m hoping it will help me with a persistent writing problem I have: I don’t finish projects often, not even projects I love and that I have been working on for years. I’m hoping that by writing shorter works (novella-length) specifically to be posted on Wattpad, I will be encouraged by reads, votes and comments and keep the story going until the end. I know, it is recommended to write your work to the finish before you start posting on Wattpad, but in my particular situation, I need something to keep me going in order to finish things.
What should you write on Wattpad, if you shouldn’t just dump a few chapters on Wattpad as a sales technique? Shorter works— short stories or novellas— related perhaps to other, longer works you are writing— might be well received. I’ve also started a non-fiction work on Wattpad called ‘What do Readers Want’ which is mean to help other Wattpad writers learn some techniques to make their Wattpad stories more readable.
I’m afraid that in the years I have written on Wattpad, I have started some Wattpad projects I never finished. Some of them I’ve returned to ‘draft’ status and may delete altogether. Others I may resume, or may even start over, someday. My current projects are a poetry volume, the ‘What do Readers Want’ book, and a work of reviews of Christian fiction on Wattpad. I am in the planning stages of a science fiction novella which is the first work of a series I’ve planned for years. I’m hopeful to start that soon.
Are you a Wattpad writer? Or do you have a Wattpad account? What have your Wattpad experiences been like? Is Wattpad something you want to do more with? 
My Wattpad works:
My MeWe Group for ‘Dissident’ (non-Leftist) Wattpad authors:(you are welcome to join.) https://mewe.com/group/5bb8a4c8a40f3041e0150490

The Death Penalty in a Post-Zombie-Apocalypse World

by
On the season premiere of the television series, The Walking Dead, Maggie Rhee, leader of the Hilltop community, sentenced former Hilltop leader to death. He pretty well deserved it. He had betrayed Hilltop more than once, and his most recent crime was an attempt to use a bereaved father’s grief to cause him to assassinate Maggie. Gregory got hanged, and the Hilltop community was better off for his going.
Modern people often don’t care for the death penalty, because they don’t mind that their taxes are higher to pay for the lifelong support of convicted murderers, and because they don’t realize that weak penalties for murder make the crime seem more forgivable, and therefore more doable. I remember a case of a girl who had murdered her own mother, who managed to go to Harvard after she got out of jail. Very modern and humane, but I wonder if there was not some non-parent-murdering young person who might have been even more deserving of a chance to go to Harvard.
In a more primitive society, the cost of not executing a killer was higher. If the killer was not let off altogether, he would have to be supported for years in confinement. Let’s forget about the fact that earlier humans didn’t have the concept of prolonged imprisonment as a punishment. Early jails were just somewhere to hold accused criminals until they got their trial, and until they got executed or whipped or whatever their punishment was. After all, post-zombie-apocalypse people would know the concept. But how many people would have to be reassigned from survival chores such as growing crops, raising goats or chickens, or hunting for meat, and spend their working hours guarding a convict? Since having only one guard at a time makes escape more possible, and having no guards for night shift would also not help, we might see 6 men assigned to guard one prisoner during all the possible shifts. How much time would these men have, in their off hours, to contribute to their own survival, and to that of their prisoner?
Death penalty also has the effect of making death penalty crimes more serious, especially if it is applied regularly. Letting people off, however, makes murder seem not such a big deal.
In the Viking society, killing someone directly, without stealth and admitting to the killing afterward, was not considered a crime against the state. It was, however, a crime that could be avenged by the family of the murdered man. Even accidental killings could be avenged that way— as could revenge killings. It was custom that you did not have to kill the actual killer. Anyone from the killer’s clan would do. And so Viking society was plagued by never-ending blood-feuds which traced their origin to one act of murder or one accidental death.
I have heard of a Catholic priest who says that the process of going forward with the death penalty gives the condemned a chance to think about the state of his soul. A chance which is missing when a man is allowed to grow old and senile in prison. Christians are not supposed to want any man condemned to hell, even the murderer of our family members, so Christians should want killers to repent and turn to God before their death.
There is a lot of killing-of-humans in the post-zombie-apocalypse world as depicted in The Walking Dead. A failed strategy, since every person killed could have been a person who could have contributed to the building of a new society and a new economy. I remember how Rick Grimes, as leader of the community of Alexandria, decided to have his followers wipe out the community lead by the bad guy, Negan. Instead he only killed off one outpost, which lead to Negan killing Abraham and Glenn. Since Rick and his followers killed many more than 2 Neganites, one wonders in what sense Rick is a good guy and Negan a bad guy if both groups kill indiscriminately.
The death penalty, applied to one individual who has killed or committed other major crimes, has the virtue of being more fair than just killing random followers of a rival group. When people believe their society has a good, functional justice system, that they will be punished only if they commit a major crime and if there is evidence against them, they start to trust that obeying the laws is in their best interest. Some, of course, will obey only out of fear, and will do the bare minimum to get by in whatever society they are a part of. But others will feel freer to contribute to a new society, knowing that others in the society will be prevented from killing them or robbing them of their property.
The problem with not having a justice system is that killers and robbers can get caught, get let off, and be free to wander to another location to prey on fresh people who don’t know them. Some people are just too dangerous and violent to be trusted with the lives of others. It’s not that we wish them dead, it’s that we wish their future victims to have the chance to live.
Current haters of the death penalty can keep their attitude in large part because we live in a society in which it is quite rare for people to be murdered and robbed randomly. Most of us don’t know personally of anyone who has been murdered. It’s only in societies in which such breaches of the law are more common in which people can feel confident that eliminating all death penalty on humane grounds won’t lead to the sacrifice of many innocent victims. A fictional post-zombie-apocalypse world won’t have such an assurance.