Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Sometimes, a phrase just comes to mind. Maybe if I collected them all, I'd have a book. As it is, I have at least the chapter titles. My sister would NEVER express herself this way; She's precious, sweet, adorable; she's well-educated. In fact, she teaches people who are going to be teachers. And although she is a died-in-the-wool UGA Bulldog, I think she last used the word "ain't" at the Champagne Jam concert headlined by the Atlanta Rhythm Section in 1978. However, today, and every single day for the past two months or more, this could have been her opening prayer to greet the day: Dear Lord, I ain't never been shot this many times before. What do I do? What am I GOING to do? Amen. Wendy She's been married for 34 years to an amazingly gifted singer-songwriter-webpage designer you-name-it guy, who has always been in perfect health, and now he is very, very ill. And she is having to make critical, life-or-death decisions every day, it seems. The only t...

Let me make this clear up front: this is NOT a carefree post. It's not a joke, it doesn't have a punchline. However, I have observed that there are moments of raving hilarity in my life, not always of my doing. I broke off another piece of the temporary bridge in my upper jaw last night. That makes five, I think. Got these stumps of teeth poking out of my jaw; I look like the most ignorant redneck in the woods. And I can't get it fixed right away, because in order to fix my TOP jaw correctly, I have to fix my BOTTOM jaw correctly. I can't afford to pay to have my bottom jaw fixed, and they won't extend me a bottom-jaw dental care loan until I pay down more of my top-jaw dental care loan; which I am doing. It wasn't supposed to take this long, but there was a snag. On the VERY DAY that I initiated the top jaw dental work, my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, quit her job. I was ac...

          This blog post reviews TWO books, but the Amazon reviews are only for one each. Don't forget that leaving a 'helpful' comment on the Amazon review is reported (by Amazon) as having a slight impact on the book's ranking, and hence sales. I obtained the books through the Kindle Unlimited program. "The Boogeyman" Amazon review is found here . And the Amazon review for "Working Vacation" may be found here. This ain't DaddyBear and the Minivandians, but they are at the very least distant cousins. Members of DaddyBear's crew, if dropped into a story in the BoogeyMan world, would recognize the core values of loyalty, importance of family ties, and the hard work needed to get ahead. And the weird. Maybe a different kind of weird. Book One, The Boogeyman, could almost pass for a Bogart movie. There are tiny bits of supernatural in the story, but nothing that is essential to the plot. Martyn Shelby, the protagonist, is the proverbial tough...

    This is the somewhat expanded review of "Forged In Blood," which is edited by Michael Z Williamson. You can read the 'essentials' review on Amazon HERE, unless I forget to put the link in. BTW: if you DO read the condensed review, & vote 'helpful' on it, it is possible that you will have a miniscule positive impact on the sales of the books I review. That's what Amazon tells us is true, at any rate. STUFF THAT WON'T MAKE IT INTO THE AMAZON REVIEW: With this review, I am ALMOST caught up with where I should be in reviewing books. Maybe three months ago, a passel of real-life events stampeded down the canyon and ran over me; I believe the correct terminology is 'they stomped a rut into me, and then walked it dry.' Not to worry; quite a lot of it has been survivable, thus far, and the rest has given me glorious perspective. Actually, I exaggerate: all of it has been survivable, if not pleasant. In addition, hardly any of it has been my fa...

    This is the EXPANDED, UNABRIDGED version of the review. If you want the condensed, Amazon review, go here . I obtained this book through the Kindle Unlimited program. This book bothered me, a LOT. I've read everything in the series, and loved it. I was EXPECTING to love this as well, but I didn't. In fact, had it not been for the fact that I read the LAST story in the collection FIRST, that being Kacey Ezell's warped and wonderful "The Start of Something Beautiful," there is at least an outside chance that I would have tossed the book midway, and moved on. And that truly, truly bothered me. It really wasn't so much that I thought the book was bad that bothered me; rather, it's that I have an almost 100% track record for loving the stories in this series, and then I found myself turning pages with distaste. If you read my blog, you know I've had some health challenges lately. In addition to the physical body stuff, I've had to grapple with some ...

    The short version review can be found on Amazon here . Check it out, and I can use the votes if you find the review helpful. When you have literate friends, you are always going to be prompted to read new material. This is TRULY important for someone like myself, by which I mean the kind of person who reads no newspapers, watches no TV, subscribes to no magazines. I'm sure that the latest lovely works are being promoted in all the customary places, but I pay less attention to those than I do to the occasional coffee stain on my monitor. (I get those from time to time, because I read something goofy, and spew coffee through my nose.) I frequent one or two Facebook sites, subscribe to a couple of blogs, and that's it. Literate friends post in those places, and I use their research to my advantage. So a couple of weeks ago, some of my literate were raving about Margaret Ball, and her latest book. I do not know this Margaret person, and perhaps that means that my environment i...

    The link to the LawDog's book has NOTHING to do with the first part of this blog, but I put it up front because I don't want to change my habit. I WILL address the book at the end of the blog! If you can't wait that long, click here t o read the abbreviated version. First, though, I want to comment about one of the minor difficulties I believe all writers face from time to time, which is: coming up with the right title. Ideally, the title should give the prospective reader a good clue as to the nature and tone of the material, and hook the RIGHT people to read the work. But, there are space limitations. I was thinking about this yesterday when I was looking for a particular movie that I had seen sometime back, about a cop and a robber, and a gunfight, and a bank robbery. As it happens, I also remembered that the two leading characters were played by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and so I was able to Google my way to 'Heat.' And I thought: crummy title. It's ...

    For those of you who come here in order to read my latest philosophical or theological struggles,  I warn in advance: this is a book review about a police detective who is also a reserve Marine officer who can shape-shift into a jaguar. Don't anticipate passion and depth, beyond that found in story dealing with the line-of-duty loss of fellow police officers. This book was released on August 15, 2017, and with great anticipation, I obtained my copy through the Kindle Unlimited program on August 17. I hear you mutter, 'but this is OCTOBER 2! What happened?' Well what happened was a trip to the hospital for a small bowel obstruction, which resolved well. That was followed by multiple trips to the dentist, for major dental surgery, and a few major family health issues, and, well, just LOTS of things. My output of reviews and blog posts suffered. It's aggravating. As for the book: There are two different groupings of shape-shifters. One group inherits, and can pass on, ...