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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

R. L. Saunders

Only a Frump could be elected in this modern age. 

Because no one trusted a man to get anything right anymore. The first female president fit the model, and this reporter was putting the pieces together on how she got elected. 

She simply put a new approach to classic poltical ploys. The right gal at the rigth time.

All wasn't smooth sailing though…

Excerpt:

"About time you showed up."

"Hey, I'm right on time!"

"Yea, but I needed to talk to someone hours ago."

"Oh, that research assignment… "

"Right. Why did I have to be assigned researching the Frump Presidency?"

"Wasn't it about the trend of older female candidates being elected?"

"Yea, frumpy ones. Not young, not necessarily married, preferably divorced after their hubby ran off with a younger woman, not particularly photogenic - Frumps."

"Is that your result after all your research? Older women make frumpy politicians?"

"Of course not. It's just a marketing angle I was working on. That's the key point all these women had in common. The ones who could claim they were victims of a womanizer got better poll results, especially after they could show that they ‘persisted and resisted’ and made their own way afterwards."

"Well, it seems a bit narrow… "

"Sorry, but the facts came out that way. Suddenly, we had only women running for office, and no younger ones. No one wanted to work for the good-looking ones, as it was an invitation to have harassment charges thrown at you."

"You can't be serious! That's a little over the top, isn't it?"

"That's what the research showed. OK, maybe the marketing needs to be massaged a bit. You have to admit that being a male became political dynamite in those early 2000 elections, particularly after 2020 or so."

"Because of all the harassment claims and publicity?"

"Exactly. Male celebrities and politicians were getting slammed all over the place. Meanwhile, media was under-reporting court cases about female teachers bedding their underage male students."

"Are you serious?"

"Sure, just check the Drudge archives. That and Blaze were showing those while everyone else was chasing the skirt chasers."

"How did that fit your research into female Presidents after 2020?"

"Polls were all over the place, and so were news reporting. Corporate news channels were reporting according to whoever was in charge of the newsrooms. And you started seeing a shift once the various complaints got rid of most of the male reporters and their complicit execs… "

With Bonus Short Stories: 

The Integrity Implosions - A simple electronic circuit was developed that would detect anyone lying or skirting the truth by giving them the runs. And then it's circuit was released to the Internet and soon was mass produced to put into gag gifts. Of course, when these found their way to Congress…

The Chardonney Conspiracy - Mrs. C_ was effectively limited to walking her woods and drinking Chardonnay while she continued to work on an endless memoir. All because they told her she'd had a "breakdown." She knew it was a conspiracy to keep her from running for office again…

Midwest Journal Press NPD

Parody & Satire

Rise & Fall of President Frump: Three Political Satires

(Short read - 45 minutes - 32 pages)

Julie Montcalm had a problem, or two of them. Horace Hackett Jr. was behind deadline for a story she needed. But the worst of that is he had written her into the story itself, as a character. 

Along with her friend and fellow classmate Micah DeWolf, she was living the story itself as Hackett wrote it. 

Worse, it was a hack-job version of his father's pulp fiction story about Caribbean wars between the English and Spanish. And the two of them were right in the middle of it!

Fictional characters aren't supposed to die in real life, right? 

Luckily, they both have their smartphones and can edit the story. Maybe even save their lives in the bargain. 

These two find plenty of adventure and even romance as they work to fix the story before it fixes them…

Excerpt: 

Horace Hackett Jr. was head down on his desk, the laptop filled with rows of b's and the machine bleeping. Horace's nose pressed neatly on that letter, regardless of the machine's discomfort.

Nearby were several empty bottles of a variety of alcoholic beverages.

"Looks like it was beer, then whiskey with a beer chaser, then straight whiskey as the beer was all gone."

Julie Montcalm was looking over the disheveled mess of the dorm room though the open door.

Behind her stood Micah De Wolf.

Both students were in the same school as Horace. And both were similarly disgusted by the state of Horace and his dorm room.

Laundry was everywhere but the hamper, with scattered pages of print outs. The printer was blinking and obviously out of ink. Several empty cartridges sat nearby, and more on the floor. They had completely missed the trash can. Some of his school texts hadn't.

Shelves for those books were filled with food wrappers and RPG manuals. In and amongst them were grade reports and various bills from equipment dealers and pawn shop receipts.

Micah crossed behind her to the keyboard on it's stand against the wall. Moving some old shirts and unmentionables over to the bed, he clicked the device on and started a riff with the volume dialed low.

Julie meanwhile had crossed to Horace and pushed his head to the side, stopping the insistent beep. She brushed his thick locks away from his face with a soft touch, more as an elder sister than an editor asking after her story. The alcohol on his breath rose to her nose and she stepped back, raising her hand to it as if to shield it from further offense

At that, Horace moaned and slowly squinted his eyes to see who was bothering him. He saw someone standing there, sideways in his vision as it cleared. Slim, in tight jeans lit from the hallway light, it was obviously a her or a she. The curving hips on long legs was definitely not his room mate or any of the many female visitors that infrequently graced the male dormers. These were black jeans, cut for dual purpose of business while displaying her feminine charms. Not that he'd ever bed this one. He recognized the ring on her hand as it left his forehead.

His head jerked upright and collided with the unlit desk lamp. The effort made his vision swirl again. Rubbing the bump was more a habit than needful. His scalp was numb from the result of all those bottles that had emptied themselves into his mouth not far below.

"So it's obvious that there is no story for me tonight." The tight jeans had a commanding voice.

Horace’s ears felt assaulted by the volume. He opened his eyes wide at this. "Julie! I'd say this was a pleasant surprise, but apparently you're here on business."

"Do you even know what day this is? Do you know the Atworthy College Quarterly is due to ship for publishing tomorrow? Do you?!?"

Horace held his ears with both hands, knowing her voice could pierce through concrete and so his hand would do little to protect his throbbing head.

"Oh, is it that time already? I was just finishing up when I must have dozed off."…

Midwest Journal Press

Keyboard in the Sky

Ever wonder how all these Romances and Academic papers get written? 

Interestingly, most of these authors have pets. Cats, particularly, who like to type. Seriously. But you'll never know it. Because they get into your dreams at night and make you think you did all that typing. 

Of course, this might explain some of the wild theories that come out of Universities these days, as well as the exotic Romances...

Excerpt:

F. D. C. Willard, a red tabby cross-bred house cat, was at his usual location for 3am. Typing out a new paper about helium-3 isotopes and the cosmic interrelationships of theoretical sub-orbital particles within nuclei.

Not that he was all that interested in the subject, but it was another chore of his.

His "master" complained sometimes of F. D. sleeping all day. But when you're up most of the night writing a research paper, the one he would take credit for, the one that would advance his career, the one that got his pay raise, sometimes F.D. thought his master was really being a little hypocritical...

If he only knew his cat was writing them for him.

F. D. (who the family called "Chester") looked down at his red-tabby paws and sometimes wished he had regular hands. But didn't want all the baggage that went along with it. A human body ate such strange things and needed more exercise. And then there was these odd "social engagements" they went to. He was happier being a cat. And so kept typing one paw after the next, one key at a time.

"Hey F.D. How's it going today?" A calico female slunk across the polished mahogany table and settled down next to him, reading the screen. "I see you're into the meat of it now. How do you do all that math and keep it straight?"

"That's not the problem, it's translating it into Academicize that's the trick. I sometimes wish I had it as simple as you and just wrote romances."

"Sure and don't you think it gets a bit difficult describing human sex and foreplay in veiled terms? Talk about running out of modifiers..."

"You do have a point there."

The red tabby continued typing with his "two-paw" method, careful precisely to hit the grey laptop keys exactly.

The calico sat quietly, reading along with his typing, respecting the tabby's concentration.

Occasionally, the tabby would have to stop and stretch, as sitting arched over the keyboard to hit the number keys, as well as the Ctrl-function combinations, was a stretch. Fortunately, there were shift and Ctrl keys on both sides of the old laptop keyboard, so a little forethought and practice made the typing easier. At one of these breaks, the calico again broke the silence of the early morning study.

"Hey, that was great news that you'd been cited over 50 times for that paper."

"How did you hear about it?"

"Oh the neighbour's cat sent her congrats via their jack terrier..."

Bonus Short Story Included: 

The Maestro - He'd traced down the old man who had swindled him out of all his savings and his life. To a Denny's, where he sat in a back booth, nursing a "bottomless" cup of coffee. Sitting there, playing solitaire with a deck of 53 cards. Now it was time for payback. But the old man was expecting him or someone like him, so he had his story ready...

Cats Typing Romance: Two Short Stories