AJ Alanson, Author

My eyes, glued to the screen, squint. “It that real? Are his abs even possible? The internet these days is like some navy SEAL training camp for my Nasty Aunt Eunice alter ego. I’m straining to catch the tiniest mistake, to find a flaw, to nitpick (and with great glee) any wrinkle, beauty mark, or scar, because I’m hunting for humans. Everywhere, in everything, the bastardization of reality floods our senses. Okay, our eyes and ears at least. Gosh, I hope there aren’t fake smells or tastes. Well…

At any rate, I ask: To what end is all this artificiality? Perhaps the tech moolahs are hoping we all grow too tired or too disoriented to discern the difference between real or Memorex at some point. And exhausted, we stop caring altogether about the difference. After all, the high note shatters the glass in both cases. Is it a coincidence, then, that our society has gone all Wild West with Orwellian dystopia?

But wait! Humans love this game!

It is easier to count the civilizations since the beginning of history that haven’t developed mysticisms for the purpose of gaslighting entire populations. The moment you’re asked to “believe” in something, and you do, the next step in the process is for someone to define—for you—what “is” is. If someone says “trust me,” one of my eyebrows is already slinking up my forehead. “I would never lie to you.” Impossible, therefore you just did. “I’ll never do it again, promise.” Throwing on the promise part is more than slightly suspicious. “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Well, this one’s rampant right now.

This is just my way of saying we can set up a lot of straw men in our lives, politicians, church leaders, doctors, educators, friends, enemies, and even machines, but to some degree, this game of is-it-or-isn’t-it just might be the first human sport. Well, okay, the second. There is another. There has to be or we wouldn’t have so many humans to play the great guessing game with us.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Fact or Fiction game, I’m an author after all, but I also believe, as Creatives, any lie we tell ourselves corrodes our heart and therefore, covers our muses in mud—and not the clean, blue spa mud either, but the muck from the bottom of the paddock. Go ahead, enjoy the game. Suck up the wild and wonderful, the brilliance and the asininities, test your prowess against millions of others. As humans, this sport is in our DNA, along with that other game. But when existing, day after day, as a full-time lie-detector wears you down, know that the only real truth you have to discern is yours.

Not lying, the progress on books 11 and 12 are not at the pace I would like. Turns out writing two books at once is daunting but, I’m just sure, good exercise for the old grey cells. The bonus: I finish with two books and the entire Admiral Inn Mysteries series complete, so there’s that. I’ll keep you posted on the progress, meanwhile, you can catch up to me. My books are all on Amazon, both eBook and paperback (for the real feel of a book).

Below is a test: Is this a widowmaker, hung up on another tree, being safely brought down by a real man with a come-along, or did I just happen to film the moment a tree was magically felled during a strange ritual by bigfoot?