So it’s been a hot minute, huh? And I do mean HOT. The temperatures here have been absolutely brutal this summer. I know it’s been a bad time when I see the forecast predict a high of 91 degrees for a given day and breathe a sigh of relief. 

But things have been going on.

1. The Keeper of the Key has been through developmental edits, copyedits, and galley proofing and is officially complete. Up next: the marketing push. Uggggh. 

I don’t mind the editing phase because I like the challenge of making a manuscript better. Marketing? Sucks. I don’t know what I’m doing. I hate asking people to publicize my book knowing most of those requests will end up deleted. I hate spamming my social media feeds over and over about my books, but I don’t know how else to get the word out. 

I have some more good news about the book, but I can’t share it yet. That’s how publishing is. 

2. Warning: I am about to Get Political. I know some readers don’t like it when authors Get Political. If you are one of those, consider this your trigger warning.

So back in 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for the presidency. And I assumed that once the Trump clan got their nasty, rancid asses the hell out of DC, this city would be free of their stench forever after. Surely the Republicans would thoroughly sage their headquarters, have some very serious talks about the horrible direction they were headed in and this dreadful, violent orange beast they’d unleashed on the country, and coalesce around some new faces who weren’t corrupt, amoral lunatics. 

Boy, was I dumb or what? I gave a lot of Republicans way too much credit. 

Trump’s baaaaaack. As of this month, the convicted felon, insurrectionist, and sex offender is the Republican nominee again. And because he managed to pack a lot of the nation’s courts his first time around—and the Supreme Court he packed just recently decided that the president has king-like powers—he is much, much more dangerous this time.

I have no doubt that should Trump win the election in November, he will not voluntarily leave the White House again until his corpse is carried out. And a lot of the people who’d take prominent roles in his second term, including the sentient Cabbage Patch Kid he chose for his new VP, sound like they’re itching to make Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead a reality at long last. 

But Joe Biden is old and had a terrible debate. 

That’s just about all the media has been willing to talk about for the last month. And they weren’t alone. Lots of prominent Democrats and wealthy donors (seriously, fuck those guys in particular) stepped up to publicly bury knives in his back. And so, as of yesterday, Biden stepped down. He’ll carry out his term, but he’s not running for re-election. 

Don’t get me wrong; I know this had to happen. After that awful debate, Biden’s public image was never going to be permitted to recover. He’s always been a gaffe machine, but now any gaffe would be magnified tenfold, more proof that he was declining. It wasn’t a question of Biden losing in November but how badly he’d get blown the fuck out. And the stakes this time are just too high. 

But I’m really disgusted by how this played out. Biden deserved so much better. He’s getting lots of tributes now, but after the trash some of these same people were just talking about him publicly, the praise rings hollow. 

It’s looking a lot at this point like Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden threw his support to, is going to be the nominee, and obviously I support her. I like her! It’s been heartening to see Democrats feeling some hope at last and rallying around her in the past 24 hours. And it’s infuriated Trump supporters and the media, who were clearly hoping for a long, bitter dogfight that would leave the eventual nominee horribly weakened going into the fall. Tough shit. She’s completely defanged the Trump campaign.

I know that a woman vs. Trump didn’t work out so well in 2016, but back then people had no idea what a Trump presidency would actually look like. In 2016, a lot of dummies thought Trump wouldn’t be that bad if he got elected; he was probably just faking all the ultra right-wing Christofascist stuff to get elected, and he’d have competent people around him who’d stop him from making too much of a mess of things. Some idiots even thought he’d be more moderate than Hillary Clinton would be, if you can imagine.

I also think a lot of women naively assumed Roe v. Wade would be safe no matter what else happened. Lesson about taking very important things for granted learned, the hard way. Voters have no excuse now. 

Obviously, Harris has a long road ahead of her. Nothing is guaranteed, and I know Election Night 2024 is going to make 2020 look like a game of patty-cake no matter what happens, and might possibly get dragged out even longer. But now we have hope, whereas three days ago I was mired in depression thinking that Trump was cakewalking to another term. 

Maybe now that his likely opponent is only 59, the media will start noticing that Donald Trump is almost 80, rambles incoherently during his speeches, gets names and facts hopelessly mixed up, and apparently thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person. 

As if Dr. Lecter, who detested rude, boorish people, would want anything to do with Trump. If Lecter actually existed. Which he does not.