I'm Still Here

For the past couple years, I've been building a house, and this has taken up much of my time and energy. Perhaps I will share more photos of the house, someday. Its theme is 'Outside In and Inside Out", which reflects an effort to merge the design of the inside of the house with the outside natural environment.  I've done a lot with wood and rock, and using free or found materials. If I were to give a name to the house, I would call it Windfall, since the monies for the land and the house were given to us.  I still think about story lines, and every so often I will work a little on Clouds Fall to Earth.  Right now I'm wondering if I should write an article to submit to the Dark Mountain Project, the UK group that published my story, “The Tragedy of Bernie the Homeless.”  The article would be on Sound, and explore Dark Mountain's theme of Confluence. To give you a hint of what the article might be about, I'll share a small but amazing occurrence that happened twice recently.  So, I am working on the house, which happens to be in a semi rural and heavily forested area, and happens often to be under the flight path of airliners flying in and out of the Asheville Regional Airport 20 miles or so south. For me, the sound of these machines, even those that are miles above, is pollution. Unwanted sound that steals from the natural sounds of wind in leaves, rainfall, birds and insects.  An airliner passes fairly low overhead, a plane whose engine produces certain frequencies, kind of a mixed whining and whistling.  And then a choir of coyotes not far up the mountainside joins in with a passionate, sorrowful and multi-voiced descant; both high and low parts merging into a confluence of human genius and technology and the hot blood and passion of a pack of wild creatures.  For now I leave you with a photo of a female monarch butterfly that was feeding on my potted milkweed.

14% Book Discounts Available

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Books are expensive, which is why whenever possible, I buy them at the local used book store, Mr. Ks.  Or, I buy used books on Amazon.  Some Amazon re-sellers offer my new books lower than retail, and some, amazingly, offer them higher. The other day I saw When Earth Whispers for sale for $42 Australian! (But shipping is free.)  

If you buy any of the three Universal Man volumes, or When Earth Whispers,at the Create Space store, I have a 14%-off-retail discount code available. If you buy the books at the regular Amazon site, you get the Kindle e-versions free.  They have most of the photographs in color.

Speaking of photographs, this one I took last Saturday is of a Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth (hemaris diffinis) on Rose Milkweed (asclepias incarnta).  Here's another article on the moth.

Universal Man/ 3. Then a Soldier

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This is the underlying cover photo for Universal Man/ 3.Then a Soldier. I took the photo in Arlington, VA in May, 2011. If you look closely at the cover on Amazon or a copy of the paperback, you'll see that the photo is in color behind the screen on the back, while the photo on the front is in black & white.  UM/3 is now available, and today I rebuilt our simple website from scratch and linked from it to where you can purchase the book either with a significant discount or with a free Kindle Edition, which is readable on any computer.  The Kindle version has nearly all the interior photographs in color. The CTP website link is HERE, and in the upper right corner of this page, below the banner photo.

Deprescience

by Mickey Hunt
   As a child, our son Timothy told his teachers he was adopted. During adolescence, he wailed in misery, certain that his best friends had moved away. By age twenty, Timothy’s grief sank into glum desolation, and he would lie on the bed all day, bemoaning an imaginary poverty. None of his therapists could free him from his flawed perception of loss...

This story (about 1000 words) can be found at Every Day Fiction.

See my Top Story of the Month interview about "Deprescience" at

Flash Fiction Chronicles.  (Note: the interview has vanished.)

Folly Blaine recorded a podcast of the story that you can listen to HERE.

The story came out as a reprint in August 2015 in Beyond Science Fiction.