And Now For Something Completely Different...
An ode to the X-Files, not Monty Python
Historical Fiction
Letters From Urkhammer Ep. 1-3
Currently, Amazon is having a story competition for their Vella Platform - “The Velly’s”. I couldn’t resist developing a new story for it, which is a bit of historical fiction mystery. Not a genre I’ve done before, but a fun one to play in. Read the first 3 episodes below and if you have a US Amazon account, you can read the first ten for free here.
Not to worry, if you aren’t a US Amazon user, I intend to make a free copy of this story available to all of my newsletter subscribers after the contest ends in October. This story is dedicated to my love of the X-Files show years ago. There’s no Mulder and Scully, but I think you’ll find an interesting mystery.
The Historical Society
"You're late."
Kristen's boss was standing in the entryway, talking to the receptionist, Laurie, as Kristen tried to sneak in. A quick glace at the clock showed 10:22, and she was supposed to be there by 9 every morning.
"Car trouble?"
Her boss, Herman Klumpp, pinched his face together and then shook his head. "Is that supposed to be a question? You're asking me if you had car trouble?"
"I'm sorry, I've been doing a lot of reading to get ready for the Young Historian's Workshop and I stayed up late last night making some videos I could use."
"So late you couldn't drag yourself out of bed to be here for our Morning Meetup? You're a part of a team, Kristen. That workshop is something we'll do together, but in order to do that, our team needs to know what all the members are up to. Can't do that if you don't make the Morning Meetups."
Kristen glanced at Laurie for support, but Laurie gave her a look to tell her she was on her own on this one.
"It won't happen again, Mr. Klumpp. I'll make sure the rest of the team is up to speed on everything today and let them know I'm happy to do anything extra they need me to do."
The boss stared at her without blinking for several long moments and then shook his head. "All right. Consider this a warning. Now get in there and get busy." He walked past her to his office, giving her backside a little swat with the papers he was holding in a way that looked just accidental enough to give him some plausible deniability.
Kristen quickly moved past Laurie's desk and into the hallway that led to her office. The Iowa Historical Society wasn't a large operation. Less than twenty people and only 12 full-time employees. They relied on volunteers who loved history to pull off the majority of their major undertakings. Whether it was their Young Historian's Workshops or doing research on the history of the towns around the state, they wouldn't be able to get it done without help from the community.
"Was Klumpp waiting for you?" Brenda asked as she walked into their office. Brenda Mackie was Kristen's only real friend in the office. She'd been working here three years longer than Kristen and was among the most punctual, organized people Kristen had ever met. If she wasn't so sweet, you would want to hate her, but she always had a kind word and had made a habit of bringing in fresh baked goods once or twice a week.
"Yes, you could have texted me a warning."
"I did. He blew up about it in the meeting this morning, and I sent you a couple of messages."
Kristen realized she hadn't looked at her phone since she realized she woke up at 9:23, already late. A quick shower and a rush across town hadn't given her a spare moment to check it. She saw two memes Brenda sent her. One of the Anger character from the Pixar movie blowing his top and another of a kid at the front of the classroom writing on the chalkboard, "I will not be late for class" over and over.
"Oops. Guess I didn't look at it after I got out of bed. Did he take it out on everyone else?"
"Nope, other than us having to listen to him complain about you, we didn't suffer. You oversleep?"
"I must have snoozed right through my alarm. I know I set it." Kristen slid into her desk, which faced Brenda's. Part of the reason she often found herself working in the evening was they often got caught up talking about things and she didn't get enough done. Most of it was work related. They both loved history, otherwise they wouldn't be working here, but talking about history didn't actually finish most of the things on their to-do lists.
"Oh, that package came for you this morning. I didn't open it." Brenda pointed to a large brown box sitting on top of their filing cabinet. Kristen stood and took it down. It was heavy, but not too heavy considering the size.
"That's strange. There's no return address."
The Package
It was a normal cardboard box sealed along every seam with packing tape. Her name, Kristen James, was written in clear, block letters above Iowa Historical Society and their address.
"Is there a postmark? It came in with the morning mail," Brenda said.
Kristen spun it around until she found the label where someone had paid for the package. "It came from Eldon."
"Do you know anyone from there?"
"Not that I can remember. Some friends and I did a road trip there to the American Gothic Museum. That's the only time I've been there and that was when I was in college."
"Big fun. You must have been a real party animal." Brenda smiled at her.
"Hey, this is Iowa. When you hang out with other history majors, what do you expect? It was a fun trip, though the museum wasn't the highlight. We love to go investigate old buildings and there was an estate sale there filled with treasures that weekend."
"Not surprising you ended up here with me. Are you going to open it?"
Kristen dug into her desk until she pulled out a nail file. Starting at the top edge, she carefully poked the end of the file through the tape and worked her way across. When she'd done the same on the other side, Kristen slowly ran it over the top of the box, separating the two sides of the lid.
As she opened the sides, the top of the box was filled with crumpled up newspaper. She reached for the first piece and screamed as she saw a cockroach running up her arm from the paper. Kristen quickly shook it off on the floor and stomped on it.
"Bugs! I hate bugs!" Brenda was now standing back by the door after a hasty retreat. "Maybe you should close it back up and take it outside."
Laurie stuck her head in the door. "Are you okay?"
"Cockroach," Kristen said as she pushed the box shut.
"Yuck, want me to get Ed?"
"No, but I will take this back outside by the dumpster before I try to open it again."
Laurie pointed at the box, which Kristen now held out in front of her like it was radioactive. "Is it some kind of a joke?"
"I don't know what it is."
The two ladies followed her down the hallway and the adjacent one that led to the rear of the building. Kristen carefully placed the box down in front of the dumpster and, looking around, spied a broom leaning up against the door frame. She took the end and used it to flip open the top of the box again. The three of them stood back, waiting for what was next.
"I don't see anything," Brenda said.
"No kidding."
"Maybe you should poke the box with the broom?" Laurie suggested.
Kristen made sure she had a good hold on the very end and gave the box a good tap. She tried again and when there were no signs of life, she took a step closer. She'd just came to stand over the box when two more cockroaches lazily crawled to the edge and down the side of the box, not paying her any attention.
"I don't care for the kind of secret admirers you attract, Kristen," Brenda said.
Kristen gave the box two more hits, but there were no other bugs. "If I ever find out who it was, they're getting a permanent ban from my contact list."
Using the end of the broom, Kristen knocked out several more pieces of wadded up paper. She continued until there weren't any left. Underneath was a manilla envelope, which took up the bottom of the box. "There better not be more cockroaches in here." She tried to pry up the edge of the envelope with the broom, but it was too thick and heavy for her to get any leverage with the thick broom handle.
Giving up, she gave two more shots of the broom to the side of the box, then stuck her fingers into the box to pull out the envelope. When it proved too difficult for one hand, she gave the broom to Brenda and used both hands to pull the envelope out. Fortunately, no more creepy crawlies followed it.
The envelope was over two inches thick and sealed up at the top. Kristen tried to open it, but couldn't manage while still holding it. "Give me a hand?" She held it out towards Brenda, who immediately backed away. "I don't do bugs."
"I'll help." Laurie came forward with her hands extended. "But I'm holding the opposite end and if anything comes out of there, it's immediately going to the ground."
"Fair enough."
Laurie grabbed the end and when Kristen was sure Laurie had a good hold on it, Kristen placed her fingernail at the seal and ran it along, creating an opening at the end. She paused to see if anything would happen before reaching in again to spread apart the opening to look inside.
It was filled with stacks of paper, which wasn't that unusual a thing to receive at the historical society. Kristen carefully stuck two fingers inside and pulled out a few that were stuck together. She immediately recognized them for what they were. "They're letters. Old letters. From almost 100 years ago."
The Letters
Brenda walked back to the door and opened it. "If our pest problem is over, I suggest we move this party back inside. It's hot out here."
"I need to get back to the front desk," Laurie said as she handed the envelope back to Kristen. "I'll have Ed clean up this mess." She pointed to the scattered papers and the empty box.
"I don't mind. Surely, after all that, there aren't any cockroaches left. Brenda, can you take these to my desk?"
Brenda's face was doubtful, but after a brief hesitation, she allowed Kristen to stack the envelope in her outstretched hands with the letters on top. She continued to hold them out with caution while Laurie propped open the door for her.
"I'll just be a minute," Kristen said.
She picked up the box and started to toss it in the open dumpster, but there was something that held her back. Kristen hesitated and then dug out her cellphone and took a picture of the address and the mailing label before tossing the box in the trash. It only took her a few seconds to gather up all the papers and throw them in as well.
She came back into her office to find Brenda in her normal spot, holding one of the letters. The envelope and the rest of them were on Kristen's desk. She looked up as Kristen entered. "I think this is a joke of some kind."
"Why do you say that?"
Brenda pointed to an address handwritten on the envelope she'd taken the letter out of. "Because all the letters I saw are from a place that doesn't exist. Though I'm not sure why someone would go to all this trouble."
Kristen picked up another letter from her desk. "Urkhammer? Never heard of it."
"You're too young, but it was big news in the historical community a few years back. It turned out to be an internet hoax. I thought we'd heard the last of it. It was a real headache at the time."
Kristen took a seat at the desk and flipped through the other letters she'd pulled out. After checking them, she dumped out the rest and rifled through a few of them. "They all say they're from different people in Urkhammer, Iowa."
Brenda laughed. "Urkhammer, Iowa. The town that mysteriously disappeared into history without a trace under very strange circumstances. The only problem with the story is it never was. Believe me, our office was taxed with the bulk of the research and there is no evidence in either the federal or state records of Urkhammer. It first appeared at the time of the hoax."
"I don't understand. How does that happen?"
"You should have a seat. As a matter a fact, why don't we grab a cup of coffee? You might need some caffeine for this one."
Kristen glanced at the letters and back at Brenda, but finally said, "Tempting. You wouldn't believe how tempting, but I've already wasted my first half hour in the office and I promised Mr. Klumpp I would catch everyone up on my progress for the Young Historian's Workshop. I've got to get that done before I do anything else. Can we talk about it over lunch?"
"Nothing pressing about this story. We can leave for lunch together whenever you're free, but don't take too long. I didn't eat breakfast this morning."
"Okay, I'll catch you up on my videos over lunch as well. I'll do my best to be done by 12ish."
Brenda held up the letter in her hand. "Do you mind if I take a peek at a few of these? I'm curious about what's inside."
"If what you've said is true, I can't imagine it would hurt anything. Go right ahead."
As Kristen left the room, Brenda unfolded the first letter.
Letters from Urkhammer - a historical fiction mystery with a bit of a supernatural twist. Click here to read more if you have a US Amazon account.
Fantasy
The Force of Magic - Book Trailer
Giveaways!
This month’s free giveaways focus on strong, independent women and summer reading. Perin from The Force of Magic, is happy to join with these other ladies. Check out some great reads below.
Non-Fiction
I’m Most Worst Enemy Pt. 2
I mentioned previously that as an indie author, I find myself frequently acting against my best career interests. Whether it is writing in multiple genres, or posting controversial things on social media. The exposure of my books sometimes lags because of these choices. Why do I do it? I have a non-fiction blog on Kindle Vella that explains part of it, but here is the introduction for free to help you understand.
There’s Something Happening Here
Rules for Journalism
Growing up, one of my favorite series of books was the Fletch mysteries. They were fairly popular in the 1970s and 80s, with 9 books released over a more than ten-year period. Most people know the more famous 1985 film starring Chevy Chase, and to a lesser extent, its sequel.
If you're unfamiliar, Irwin Maurice Fletcher is a wise-cracking, sarcastic investigative journalist based in California in both the book and movie series. An ex-marine, Fletch is known for his ability to go undercover to get the story.
He found himself solving murders, uncovering corruption, and usually getting the girl. Basically, every mystery trope that would fit for an investigative journalist to be involved in during this period. I loved the humor of the books and the quest for truth. Other than that, Fletch wasn't a great role model, but the books played a significant role in my desire to go into journalism.
Another great interest was sports, and by the time I graduated high school, I envisioned studying journalism with the idea of being a sports journalist. I loved reading Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News and read books like A Season on the Brink, the Jordan Rules and Bootlegger's Boy. I hoped to build a career in sports writing.
Dreams die fast and Journalism 101 was the death of that dream. I'm grateful for that. It was very clear during that first semester that I didn't want to live in the world of professional journalism. The kind of rules for writing in Journalism seemed very constrictive to me and I didn't want to spend years of my life writing copy for someone else.
I did learn a lot in that class and I remember some of the things they talked about well. "Truth, accuracy and objectivity are the cornerstones of journalism ethics." That's the way it's supposed to be, right? We've all seen the movies and TV shows where the editor or chief in the office refuses to run the story because the sources don't check out.
If they can't verify the truth of the story, they didn't want to run it. Bias was also to be avoided at all costs. The editorial page was supposed to be the only place where you would find a personal opinion. For the rest of the news, it was only:
"Sources say..."
"It was reported that..."
"According to..."
Reporters aren't supposed to tell you what they think only what the facts are. If someone else is giving their opinion, the report is supposed to tell you very clearly that this is what the person is saying, not that it's the truth. These were the rules, and a reporter would be fired for violating them. That's what I was told. That's what I was taught. So, what happened?
Now, reporters are fired for not reporting the right opinion. Fox news mostly hires people who hold to their company line. CNN and MSNBC do the same. There is very little attempt to report objectively. Discerning the news in the way one might have decades earlier is far more complicated.
The Society of Professional Journalists in the Preamble to its Code of Ethics states:
Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.
I see very little evidence this is practiced by modern, mainstream journalists. I've been fortunate to find a few independent journalists who seem to care about such things, but what you see from the big names in news violates these standards moment by moment.
So, why should you care? In the next episode, I want to talk about why I started caring and when I began paying attention enough to notice. It started, like many things, in the Spring of 2020.
Integrity Declined
My life got turned upside down two months before everyone else's in 2020. You wouldn't believe me if I told you without a longer explanation, but when March of 2020 rolled around, I had even more time on my hands than everyone else did. The good, I finally finished my first book and was able to start writing while spending more time with my family. The bad, pretty much everything else. You probably lived it yourself.
What happened that's relevant to this story is what we all saw on social media beginning in March and continuing on. In February, long before the pandemic as we know it ramped up, I read an article about the virus. Our family are world travelers and we had three international trips planned between us from March to May in 2020. Because of this, we were all thinking about how the virus might impact upcoming plans earlier than most.
We'd lived through SARS and the bird flu and seen the way those things screwed up the lives of a few people we knew. The article I read was released February 24th, 2020 and was entitled, "You're Likely to Get the Coronavirus." It was published in The Atlantic and was a very calm, reasoned discussion of the virus.
Some highlights:
It's not as deadly as some of the viruses that came before, and because of this we're unlikely to be able to deal with the spread. Which is why the author concluded most of us were likely to get it.
Many will have a mild disease or be asymptomatic.
The most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease, with cold and flu season becoming "cold, flu and COVID-19 season".
"If we're putting all our hopes in a vaccine as being the answer, we're in trouble.
At some point, we may talk about these projections, but I put them out there as a sample of the kind of thing that might have appeared in any news publication prior to March of 2020, but would not have appeared after that in most mainstream publications. We'll get to the why of that later.
In April and May of 2020, I observed a disturbing trend by some of the people I knew on social media. They were sharing misinformation and memes which seemed to spread dangerous mistruths and half truths about the pandemic. Some of these things were very different from what we were hearing from the government, the CDC and every major news source, both from the left and the right.
As a Christian, I was especially concerned with fellow Christians who were regularly sharing these posts. The Bible is filled with verses that encourage us to be people of truth. We're warned against lies and deception and challenged to be people of integrity. Unlike journalists, the standard is not just manmade dictum, but something we believe was a direct command from the creator of the universe.
You may not share my faith, but everyone should be able to appreciate the need for people to not live as hypocrites. Instead, they should carry their lives out according to their own standards and beliefs. In May, I wrote an article with the title, Integrity Declined. It was meant to be a challenge to my Christian friends to care deeply about whether or not what they posted online was true.
It ended with the following challenge: "When we enter the public forum, whether it is in person or online, let’s have the caution to consider our words carefully and to be advocates for the truth, champions for integrity, instead of accomplices in its continual decline."
I wanted everyone who read that article to consider carefully before they posted or reposted content online. If they were Christians, I wanted them to feel conviction that it was the right thing to do according to their professed beliefs. They should be incredibly cautious before they shared information.
As is often the case when you preach or teach on a topic, you learn a lot and should hopefully feel the need to apply your directives to your own life. I wanted to follow my own mandate and started to be very careful about such things and to research the topics well before I posted anything online. What I found next was shocking.
Behind the Curtain
My entire adult life, the news wasn't very important to me. Occasionally, there would be a big story that would catch my interests, but I was far from a daily news consumer. I went years without ever turning on a news program. Normally, I would catch a few headlines online, but the only news I regularly consumed was related to sports and technology.
What this meant is I was only nominally informed about things. I think there are many people out there like me. We have a general idea what is going on, but just don't care enough to learn more. Anyway, back to May of 2020. We're all in lockdown, some states and countries worse than others. I'm in temporary housing with my family while I try to figure out what to do next with my life.
In that environment, I had the time to look for the story behind the story. Because of my article on integrity, I also had the motivation. Almost every news source had a pretty consistent take on the pandemic. We had death counters running on the screen and messaging related to treatments was almost the same from place to place.
When some of my contacts started posting things skeptical of what we were being told, I first assumed they must be wrong. After all, surely the government would be careful about the information it was pushing. We had all these agencies: CDC, FDA, NIH as well as international agencies like the WHO. They were all saying the same things, and what they were saying was repeated on news websites, in papers and even by entertainment and sports stars. The scales weren't balanced. That one crazy guy on social media had to be wrong about everything.
Every few days, I would pick one of these posts or memes and start digging. The funny thing is your initial search on almost any topic yields the same information from dozens of sources. National and local news stations parroting almost identical versions of the same thing. Talk is cheap, though. I didn't want to just read what someone was saying about something. That's the opinion pages. The editorial pages. Even on the leading news stories, you often had quotes by experts, but no links to the data to back it up. Just words.
It seemed like I was caught in a circle. People quoting people quoting people and talking about their quotes. Sometimes there would be vague references to studies, but there were never any links. The sources weren't there. Instead, you would often find dismissive name-calling of the skeptics, rather than any engagement with their arguments.
Huh, that's odd. If everyone agrees a certain position is right, surely it's based on something more than consensus?
Only it didn't seem to be. On the other hand, sometimes the crazies online were often all about the links. They were sharing published papers and studies. Interviews with doctors and researchers who were conducting trials right now in their hospitals trying to save lives. These doctors who were desperate to help their patients were being shadow-banned and silenced.
The big one for me was how, across the United States, they refused to acknowledge post-infection immunity. This was Immunology 101, but nobody would talk about it. Some countries did and treated those who had confirmed their antibodies quite differently, but in the United States it was completely ignored.
Early treatment, drug repurposing and natural immunity are things that doctors and immunologists are trained on when it comes to fighting a pandemic. They'll get it wrong sometimes, but every success has the chance to save lives. Possible successful treatments could even end the pandemic if the right one is discovered.
Don't read this and hear me saying that every crazy post online is always right. That simply isn't true. What I was surprised to discover is many of the posts that seemed so far afield from the narrative being pushed were actually more grounded in a quest for answers through research and scientific pursuit. Remember, science is the rigorous process of discovery. When someone says, "trust the science" they should be telling you to trust in an ongoing effort to ask questions and seek answers. Shutting down this quest is not science. Telling doctors not to try and repurpose drugs to help their patients is not science. Refusing to release the findings of testing to others in the medical/scientific community is not science.
All of this was shocking to me in my naïve view of news and information. I assumed that the principles of journalistic integrity were being applied. I assumed that the Hippocratic oath was being honored. Those assumptions were foolish. The modern world is driven by money and profits. Most media companies are owned by billionaires. Most government agencies are staffed by people hoping for lucrative jobs in the industries they are supposed to be policing. The more you look into these things, the more you find.
There are days when I wish I could go back to my pre-2020 perspective. The rest of 2020 and the years that have followed have been far from fun. Waking up every day knowing many of the things we're being told are outright lies or incomplete deceptions isn't something I ever really wanted to know. But there are things you can't unsee once seen. There are things you can't forget once you know.
The most frustrating part of this is seeing the people who are just like I was, going through the motions, accepting the Kool-Aid they're being given. I don't know if this article will help anyone. I'm not asking you to trust my opinion on anything. The encouragement of this writing is for you to pay more attention to what you're being told. Don't just assume the people feeding you information are doing it with pure hearts and clean hands.
What follows will be a trail of clues. Each episode will pick a current topic or story and put forth a few things to consider or a few questions to ask. To the best of my ability, I won't post anything that hasn't been carefully evaluated for links to original sources. Don't take my word for it. If you care enough to have an opinion on a topic, care enough to be informed.
One last caveat. Real life is not lived in the news or online. Real life is lived with your family and friends and in your community. Don't live in the headlines. Live with those you love and care about and never let the headlines divide you from those in your real community.