I don’t normally ask questions in my bookquotes, but this blessing of encouragement hit me strongly. Of these three, which would be the best gift to get from a fairy godmother type? Comment below.
Blog
Flash: Songs to Reminisce By
Photo by Pict4life on Unsplash
Lucy cuddled with Ed on the blanket they had laid out for the City’s concert of “Songs to Reminisce by.” The first band did covers of Boomer oldies like “Summer of ’69” and “The Day Music Died.” The middle band broke out the Gen-X and Z rock ballads; closing with “We didn’t start the fire”. As the sun set in a specular rush of reds and oranges, the families with children packed up their sleepy heads while the headliners set up the stage for their Gen Alpha and Beta covers.
Pulling out their glow sticks, the early thirties couple lit them up when “The Year of Two-Six” started. They always considered it their song, and sung along with the band: “In the summer of twenty-twenty-six; when the White House was run by hicks, wrestling on the lawn, patio furniture in the West, to the East all was demolished. Me and my baby hit the sands, hoping no hurricanes were a’coming in.”
(words 161; first published 6/21/2026)
Art: Embroidery – The Bargello Boxes
TIMELINE: 1/15/2026 to 6/17/2026
1/15/2026 – My embroidery guild January’s meeting did a simple Bargello square. I always forget how fun and easy canvaswork is. I’ve never had the opportunity to use stretcher bars before, so that was an interesting new skill set. Before hoops and scroll frames have been my go-to. I do like the bars for canvaswork. The guild provided the canvas and thread from its stash. The provided thread was variegated, and I chose two skeins from the mass of randoms passed around: a blue-green mix and a purple-yellow mix.
1/18/2026 -Oh, oh!!! I know what I want to do with this random learning piece. I want to make a BOX!!!! The top is done. Now I just need to do it four more times. (The box doesn’t need embroidery on the bottom.) This project is going to take major scrounging. I have three stretchers frames and begged two more off the teacher with the canvas already attached! Five frames in hand, I managed to find two more canvases of the same grid count – same of the canvas is white and some ivory, but I’m covering it up, so that should be fine. Now for the thread, because what I snagged during the lesson won’t be enough for four sides. Found some. I took a picture of the label that came with one of the overdyed threads. I think I am good. (Six hours on the project so far.)
I like the concept of the box, but my autistic side does not like working with variegated threads (no control over the color change). The original concept for the project chosen by the teacher was to use the variegated threads to highlight the textures used, so I am stuck with that. It looks great as a finished project; I just hate WORKING with them.
1/26/2026 (10.75 hours; total hours 16.75)– The first two sides of the box are complete. These used the same skeins as the top. A golden-yellow-to-light-lilac mix and a blue-to-green mix. The next two boxes are using two different skeins, but with the same sorts of colors. In this case the green-blue mix is darker and the yellow mix is more chaotic. I started working on them.
2/3/2026 (4.5 hours; total hours 21)– All five sides are now complete. Next up, I need to create narrow strips for the lips that will go on the side of the box. I am out of this particular type of canvas, so I need to take the canvas off the frames, cut and finish the sides and assemble the bottom of the box and hopefully enough of the canvas will be viable to make the edges for the lid. Then I will need to design the edges and sew those with the scrounged thread which is beginning to run low. The hardest part, as always, is cutting the embroidery ground cloth to make the final project.
6/13/2026 (1 hour; total hours 22) – Remove the embroidery from the frames. Cut out the excess canvas. After that fold over the canvas edge and secure it to the back through sewing. (You can see how this looks in Bargello Box 2.) Pictures of the front and back.
5/17/2026 Bargello Box Part 2 – I ordered needle cases. When they arrived, I realized they would be the perfect size for the Bargello Box (whenever I finish assembling it) – three in a box. I had six needlecases.
Oh.no. I need to embroider another box.
I took the old sides off the frames and added canvas to work the new sides. The original box was worked in Watercolor (a type of thread), but I don’t have enough of it laying around to make a complete new box, so instead I will be making this box out of ThreadWorx variegated thread. Canvas stretched; colors chosen. Everything is now ready to rumble!
5/21/2026 All the embroidery will be done in ThreadWorx colors, where the original box had been done in the Watercolor brand. Watercolor is three-strands and the embroidery was worked one strand at a time. While cotton, it acted large and wooly. ThreadWorx is an overdyed cotton brand with six-strands, and I am working the embroidery with five strands for the stitchwork, except for the cross-stitch edge which will be worked in four-strands.
The colors used:
one) Internal lines and cross-stitch edge – Morning Glories 1080.
two) The red/blue sides – Lipstick Red 1090 and Natures Berries 10261.
three) The brown/blue sides – Kaleb’s Cherry Patch 10372 and Midnight Skies 1140.
four) Top will have the mix of these colors.
Today’s picture has all the Internal lines done for all five sides, plus 3/4ths of one of the red/blue sides. This is four days of work, including two meeting nights.
5/25/2026 Continuing a little every day. Five more days plugging along, for a total of nine day, completing one square and starting the next, plus some special work on the lid.
5/30/2026 Four more days working on this project. The second square is not complete; I still need to do the cross-stitch edge. Since I am avoiding that, I instead am working on the third square and continue to work on the multicolor top.
6/6/2026 Six more days completed. The second square is now complete with the cross-stitch edge; I got it done while talking to a friend on the phone. Now one to sides three and four, completing one color for them and adding it to the top as well. Onto the final color of the project except for the cross-stitch edging.
6/13/2026 Six more days completed. All squares are complete including the cross-stitch edges. I removed the embroidered sides and lid from their frames, cut the excess canvas off. From there I have folded over the sides on four of the five pieces. Pictures are of the front, back, and how the sides will be assembled.
6/14/2026 Final day, the box has been assembled. The “lid” ended up being the bottom, so it is more a cup than a box.
6/17/2026 Final day, the box has been assembled from the yellow/green panels.
Geeking Science: Humans are Uncanny Lovers
Photo by Peter Burdon on Unsplash
I’ve talked here about a lot of different types of romances: sweet, spicy, closed-door, open, erotica, slow burn. There are additional categories like big-beautiful, omegaverse, and blue alien romance. Popular at the moment is monster erotica, where the female (or male) character falls for a literal monster: sasquatch, Frankenstein’s monster, or a werewolf (not the fuzzy puppy type). Some people go “how deviant!”
So why am I talking about this in my Geeking Science area? Well, because humans have always been like this. They have always been Monster F*ckers.
About 750,000 or so years ago, humans left Africa. These branched off into different species including Neanderthals and Denisovans, with the Neanderthals being more European and Denisovans being more Asian. These likely “interbred with a super archaic population of hominins that had spread out from Africa about 2 million years ago.” (Learn)
Meanwhile, back in Africa, hominins continued to evolve and become the first iteration of homo sapiens. When they left Africa between 300,000 and 60,000 years ago (Wu), they ran into the evolved homo variations of Neanderthals and Denisovans, and, well, interbred with them (fucked them). How do we know? Because their DNA is still in humans. (Choi)
Now, to be clear, it is Europeans who have the highest amount of Neanderthal DNA and Asians/Oceanians who have the highest of Denisovan. One to two percent of all modern humans of European descent have Neanderthal bouncing around in their DNA and about one to six percent of Asians/Oceanians have Denisovan. In addition, since Denisovan were typical of the human family and had interbred with an archaic branch over 2 million years off of everyone else, Asians also have a little bit of that twisted up in the DNA strain. (Choi)
The two areas where the DNA is the strongest are in immune responses and food processing, which makes sense. The more variation a population has to diseases and in food, the better it is able to provide breaks in transmission of diseases and eat when local food production drops. Neanderthal genes also seem to be related to a nap during the day and stay awake late into the night cycle; so if you are a night owl, it may be you are a little more Neanderthal than most. (Lefler)
Science Fiction writers like writing stories about the Uncanny Valley theory, where if something looks ALMOST human, but not exactly, it freaks humans out. The closer the look, while still failing the “is it human” the worse the repulsion. (Perera) This theory is being tested with modern computer simulations and robots, trying to find the line of making a robot or simulation for a video look human enough to be comfortable but different enough to be comfortable – robotics and other technology creators want the familiarity and trust of being human-like without activating the “it is not human but pretending to be us so kill it with fire” reaction.
Some have asked why do we have this reaction and writers of genre (science fiction, fantasy, horror) use to to speculate at one point there was something very, very bad that looked like us, demons or aliens, and we had to destroy them to survive. Scientists speculate it might simply have been the homo sapiens leaving Africa and running into the other branches of hominids, then destroying them.
But…but…evidence says contrary. It seems like humans fucked the uncanny valley siblings. Humans have always been monster fuckers; humans are Uncanny lovers.
Bibliography
Choi, Charles Q. (edited by Kristina Killgrove, Laura Mondragon.) “Scientists discover 2 new ‘ghost’ lineages that contributed DNA to modern humans.” Live Science. 2026 July. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/scientists-discover-2-new-ghost-lineages-that-contributed-dna-to-modern-humans
Learn, Joshua Rappo. “How Do You Tell a Neanderthal from a Denisovan?” Discover magazine. 2021 November 31. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.discovermagazine.com/how-do-you-tell-a-neanderthal-from-a-denisovan-43069
Lefler, Leah. “8 Neanderthal Traits That are Found in Modern Humans.” Owlcation. 2023 December 16. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://owlcation.com/stem/8-neanderthal-traits-in-modern-humans
Perera, Ayesh. “Uncanny Valley: Examples, Effects and Theory.” Simply Psychology. 2026 July 30. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.simplypsychology.org/uncanny-valley.html
Wu, Katerine J. “Modern Humans May Have More Neanderthal DNA Than Previously Though.” Smithsonian magazine. 2020 February 4. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-research-expands-neanderthals-genetic-legacy-modern-humans-180974099/
Book Review (SERIES): Tales from the Long Night
Tales from the Long Night is a new universe by J. Kenton Pierce. Each story, so far, has been a stand-alone, but some will slowly work their way into full series. I had fallen into this Universe through a short story “Big Mama” in an anthology Pogue One; I told you about the Anthology as my March Book Review (3/3/2026). I wanted so much to see more of this universe so I went searching, and now I have two novellas and one novel under my belt. I don’t know if there are more short stories from this universe in the Raconteur Press Anthologies; if so, I hope someone will collect any short stories under one umbrella, but any collection will need to wait at least a year from the Anthologies publications because of contracts.
The stories I have read so far in time order of the Long Night Universe (because, yeah, it is that sort of universe – again, these can be read in any order. So far the author has been really good at compartmentalization):
- Big Mama (short story in Pogue One) – published January 9, 2025
- An Apple for the Legion (novella) – published April 20, 2026
- Back Alley Angels and Badland Devils (two novelettes) – published November 18, 2025
- A Kiss from Damocles (novel: Book 1 of Shai) – published June 26, 2005
The order I actually read these were Big Mama, Back Alley, A Kiss, and An Apple.
Amazon Cover
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON FOR An Apple for the Legion
From the universe of the 2026 Prometheus Award finalist A Kiss for Damocles — welcome to the Tales from the Long Night.
Third Decanus Kaur was engineered for this.
The Mutual Prosperity builds its legionaries from the genes of heroes — and Kaur carries the literal face of Tanveer Kaur, hero of the Spring Thunder Campaign, the soldier whose sacrifice helped pull humanity back from extinction. She has trained since birth to liberate the enslaved populations of the Terran Commonwealth. She has memorized the Social Virtues. She has crushed her doubts, disciplined her questions, and proven herself a worthy daughter of humanity’s finest.
Then she lands on Hesperides Colony, and the liberation refuses to go as planned.
The colonists fight like they mean it — not from ideology or fanaticism, but because they have something worth protecting. When her commander hands her a contraband biography of her own mother and tells her to read it, the headaches begin. Because what Tanveer Kaur actually believed, actually said, in her own unedited words — it doesn’t match anything the Prosperity taught her daughter.
Then the volcano erupts.
Cut off from Fleet. No resupply. No evacuation. A dying colony buried under ash, a population the Prosperity considers expendable, and orders that grow more monstrous by the hour. Kaur is twenty-three years old. She commands ten legionaries. And the man who has spent decades teaching her what it truly means to honor her heritage is running out of time to finish the lesson.
An Apple for the Legion is a gripping, character-driven military science fiction novella — precise, dark, and impossible to set aside. A story set in the Tales from the Long Night: a universe where humanity survived the stars and built something that might not have been worth saving.
MY REVIEW FOR An Apple for the Legion
Is ignorance tolerable as a form of innocence?
If so, never enter a library, and never, ever be ground troops freeing a people. In both cases you might be pelted with books and knowledge.
Kaur is a genetic descent of a great war hero, redesigned and improved, optimized for strength…and intelligence and leadership, which may have not been the best move by a totalitarian government to create an obedient solider even with restricted information access, nighttime reprogramming, constant retraining, and obsessive observation. Curiosity, valuing the soldiers she is in charge of, and the ability infer from limited data sets makes her a piss-poor “follow orders” leader no matter how deep the programming is.
Kaur likes apples. The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And since falling from the heavens to the hell on earth that is the Hesperides Colony after the invasion Kaur is part of, the Eden of her mind keeps getting hit with seismic blows.
Caught between Muse and Mentor, Kaur has to decide how much of the Apple she will accept.
Tales from the Long Night is a strong world J. Kenton Pierce has created. Each part can be read as a stand-alone; An Apple for the Legion, especially, works well as it is a prequel to the two main series of the universe. The science fiction novella is set in the beginning of the apocalypse Hesperides experiences. Most of the rest of the stories are set in the aftermath.
This story, for fans of the series, is a must-read as it gives a hint at what else is happening in the universe. I hope that Mr. Pierce collects the short stories he has also written for this universe into one collection to fill things in even more.
Amazon Cover
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON FOR Back Alley Angels and Badland Devils
In a galaxy ravaged by fallen empires, endless wars, and a volcanic apocalypse, hope isn’t bestowed by fate—it’s forged by gritty survivors reclaiming their freedom and heritage. Welcome back to J. Kenton Pierce’s epic Tales from the Long Night universe, where ordinary heroes rise against the encroaching dark.
Back Alley Angels and Badland Devils delivers two pulse-pounding stories spotlighting the unsung warriors of Hesperides Colony, scarred by the Mutual Prosperity’s invasion. These raw tales of resilience pit flawed protagonists against hostile xenos, ancient horrors, and shadowy schemes.In “The Greenline Gambit,” set centuries into the Long Night, amiable brawler Kraitte thrives in the subterranean sprawl of Greenline Town—a former refugee sanctuary turned industrial hub. By day, he’s a heavy lifter; by night, a smuggler’s guardian. But when a mysterious brunette offers a high-stakes job, Kraitte plunges into a web of rival factions vying for underground power, testing his newfound sense of home and family.
“El Banquero del Diablo” rewinds to the invasion’s chaotic aftermath, amid ash-choked volcanic winter. Rugged cowboy Danny Bozeman, a former rider for Boss Rosenberry, joins the nascent Nuevo Tejas Rangers to rebuild society. Preferring simple brawls and bar tabs, Danny confronts capital-E Evil—an ancient darkness threatening innocents—armed only with unyielding grit and iron resolve.These standalone adventures weave into the saga’s larger arcs, proving heroes emerge from back alleys and badlands, not thrones. In a cosmos of implacable threats, the fight for dawn is eternal. Join Kraitte and Danny’s ruckus–and learn what it means to never quit.
MY REVIEW FOR Back Alley Angels and Badland Devils
Back Alley Angels and Badland Devils is a dual short-story collection totaling 100 pages in paperback. Both stories are good, though I preferred the second, “El Banquero del Diablo.”
Both stories are set in the post-apocalyptic science-fiction “Tales from the Long Night” universe created by J. Kenton Pierce, and have a large male protagonist doing the business of right but in a wrong manner. These are not white-hat heroes; they wear gray proudly. This universe, if you are not familiar with it, has a distinctly weird-west sci-fi feel similar to steampunk but in its own category with Star Wars, Westworld, Company A: The Origin of the Martian Rangers by Peter Prellwitz, and A Fistful of Dust by A.G. Carpenter. I should note that the second short story crosses from weird-west sci-fi into horror.
The Greenline Gambit is set in the same time as A Kiss from Damocles, the first full-length novel set in the TFTLN Universe. Kraitte, married to a cop but making his living in the underbelly of the Greenline as a day-laborer and a night-opportunist, finds himself at cross-purposes with the law. They want his skills and he doesn’t want to be noticed, especially with the genetic baggage he carries. But two new players are messing with the balance between legal and not-so-legal, and it makes the cops nervous. The cops, criminals, and new factions all are playing with him like he is a disposable piece in their power games. Can he flip the board without losing the game?
El Banquero del Diablo stars Danny and Jenny, two Rangers on a newly compromised world (set about 500 years before the Greenline Gambit). These first generation of Rangers from Hesperides Colony create the legends, the boots, later generations try to fill with honor and inspiration. These early Rangers, though, are unlike the expectations of later legends. They, well, were city rats and problem-makers sentenced to be front-line soldiers or spend life in prison. They are dirty, crafty, and dangerous. The only reasons judges sentence them to miliary service is jails wouldn’t hold them long.
These potential monsters, having accepted the leash of civilization then getting slammed on a planet facing volcanic winter, now inflict civilization on monsters who won’t accept the leash. Slavers, killers, and enemies from the stars. The El Banquero short story follows them chasing one such monsters to ground and cornering him against the sea with his posse. Closing on him, Danny and Jenny discover that monsters come in all shapes and sizes and varying degrees of nasty.
Like I said, El Banquero is my favorite of the two stories. Great characters, FUN dialog, and real stakes. Greenline is an “only” investigation; Banquero is a gun-slinging adventure. Both are really good.
Amazon Cover
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON FOR A Kiss from Damocles (Book 1 of Shai)
The enemy is dead. Their guns still aim.
The Mutual Prosperity invaded Hesperides Colony centuries ago–dropped asteroids on the oceans, triggered a volcanic winter, killed millions. The invaders eventually died fighting. Their orbital artillery AI, Damocles, did not. It has spent three hundred years killing anything that looks like a threat: radio signals, powered vehicles, anything that might let humanity rebuild fast enough to strike back.
Seventeen-year-old Shaifennen “Shai” Roehe grew up in a mineshaft, scrounging salvage from the ruins of a dead civilization. Then she finds a crashed military shuttle from the Long Night buried in a highland ravine. It’s the biggest salvage find in living memory–and it comes with secrets. Traitors from the original war. A murdered alien marine who died fighting for humanity’s future. And enough battlesteel and fabrication equipment to turn her struggling homestead into something that scares the right people.
From there, Shai has to navigate a volatile trade mission to the nearest town, untangle a conspiracy that runs generations deep, survive assassination attempts, and figure out why every faction on Hesperides–the Riders, the Archive, the alien Imps, the new Trade Association that smells a lot like the old tyranny with better hair–seems to already know about a project she has only just stumbled into.
Shai’s universe is one filled with fallen empires, implacable war machines, lost civilizations, hostile xenos, the occasional ancient unspeakable horror, and she’s going to bring the ruckus to every corner of it.
Winner the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, A Kiss for Damocles is the first book in the Tales From the Long Night series. Post-apocalyptic science fiction with a ferocious protagonist, deep world-building, earned political stakes, and a genuine belief that humanity can take back what it lost — if it can stop fighting itself long enough to try.
MY REVIEW FOR A Kiss from Damocles (Book 1 of Shai)
I read one of the short stories Mr. Pierce has created for the Tales from the Long Night and knew I had to have more and I went looking and discovered this novel.
The wonderful cross of western and science-fiction comes across in the language and circumstances on this post-apocalyptic world where an orbital bombardment had set off the planet’s equivalent of the Yellow Stone Caldera. This story is set when the survivors of the colony caught in the crossfires between two interstellar empires finally are beginning to crawl out of their Volcanic Winter and face the “landmines” left behind by the war, specifically a space platform set to destroy anything that looks like higher man-made technology.
It’s hard to advance when any advancement leads to precision orbital bombardment by an ancient long-forgotten-by-its-creators platform.
A young female scrounger finds the score of a lifetime, not only for her but her community. The waves of which will either be felt around the world, or stolen from them. A Kiss follows Roehe from find, to family, to foe. Can she keep her head and her temper long enough to gain the benefit without calling down disaster upon everything.
I just love the western flavor, the scrapy characters, and the defiance against a world that was never the cradle of humanity.