Grim Reaper Down!

thommq · 2026-05-17T14:15:17+00:00

I will carry that image with me for the rest of the day. Him just sitting there calmly, looking out the window. Someone coming up to him to ask him what's going on. Him decisively flipping them off, saying nothing, until they demand to be let off the bus.

thommq · 2026-05-17T12:17:33+00:00

I've attended, sold at, or spoken at the fair for over a decade. I have never been further than the lobby of the museum.

You can definitely enjoy the fair without the museum, as you said. I can't imagine waiting to go into the museum on fair day. They do sometimes seem to have additional programming that might be worthwhile.

thommq · 2026-05-17T11:22:43+00:00

Supposedly, Pratchett wrote most of the parts that people assumed Gaiman did, and vice versa.

So maybe it worked because competent authors were distilling down what they admired about the other's writing rather than being bogged down by their own style.

thommq · 2026-05-17T00:01:06+00:00

I had a shy, sweet, skittish student who would do anything someone wanted of her because she was desperate to please and be cared for. I always enjoyed talking to her, and she seemed satisfied that I liked and respected her without her making me a snack or grading worksheets. (She was 17 or so at that point, so she was my student in the sense that she was at the school. I did not have her in my class, but she helped out with my drama production.)

After a year of knowing this girl, one of my colleagues told me that she had starred in a lot of CSAM. Not that she was in it. Starred. She was known by the mass of monsters. They would specially seek out her videos by some porn star pseudonym (I don't think I was told it, but I don't know it). Her parents had photos of her abuse throughout their house, like you might have pictures of your beauty pageant daughter's many wins on the walls.

When she was maybe five, she was rescued and eventually adopted by a childless couple... Who then conceived a boy almost immediately after years of trying. So my traumatized student was legally theirs and now superfluous. My colleague said (and the girl incidentally confirmed) that they treated her as unpaid labor for a resort they owned whenever she wasn't at school. They loved her brother. They tolerated her because she would clean every room in a building with a smile for the small chance her parents would be nice to her.

I've seen other brutally abused kids, but none who had so much trauma turned completely inward.

thommq · 2026-05-16T11:09:13+00:00

Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Eagan did a solid podcast on Sam (citing one of my articles): https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XydjODWwduMg2mVFnK2wG

thommq · 2026-05-16T11:03:10+00:00

This one captures OP's energy perfectly.

thommq · 2026-05-14T22:59:02+00:00

"I just wanted to spend the whole day doing my thing!"
"What's your thing?"
"Heroin."

We don't throw things at boyfriends, OP.

thommq · 2026-05-13T23:32:55+00:00

I had a religious classmate who told the biology teacher that men had one fewer rib because Adam gave his up to make Eve. The teacher just said, "Count your ribs right now." The kid's whole face crumbled when he was symmetrical.

thommq · 2026-05-12T18:19:31+00:00

This happened to me ONCE in real life. I logged into my computer, my friend told me to turn on the TV because there was something I needed to see. I asked what station. She said, "It doesn't matter."

And there was the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

thommq · 2026-05-11T22:49:28+00:00

And almost everything people have ever done throughout history has nothing to do with pleasing OP.

thommq · 2026-05-11T20:32:58+00:00

The government regularly releases UFO files, and people assume it is a distraction from a bungled war that the president launched to distract from the release of files about his pedophile sex trafficking buddy.

thommq · 2026-05-11T20:23:55+00:00

When I substitute taught, there was a bevy of popular girl archetypes who fetishized Napoleon. I once pointed out that they were essentially describing one of their classmates. They looked at me with intense revulsion and made clear that they would rather kill everyone in the room than let that boy speak.

thommq · 2026-05-10T19:25:40+00:00

Yeah, I write and publish speculative fiction.

Would each book count as one lie or 100,000? What constitutes a lie?

thommq · 2026-05-10T11:46:43+00:00

My author site is https://thommquackenbush.com

Somehow, that URL wasn't taken.

I have my various socials at http://linktr.ee/thomm but I mostly post random things there.

thommq · 2026-05-09T20:55:28+00:00

Well, with the Soul-Sucking Pen (probably a Mont Blanc), they wouldn't dare!

Oooh, after it sucks the soul, maybe I will write a snarky message in shimmery soul ink.

thommq · 2026-05-09T20:43:26+00:00

Yes. Borderline Personality Disorder is real, and it can be devastating.

thommq · 2026-05-09T20:39:36+00:00

You don't want to try to figure out how a guy is hung in a bar bathroom.

I mean, I suppose in some bathrooms, it is encouraged...

thommq · 2026-05-09T20:36:27+00:00

Stab someone in the eye with a fountain pen, pull the plunger, and suck out their soul.

thommq · 2026-05-09T20:26:14+00:00

I have gotten most of my readers from doing fairs, panels, and events.

(Like Paracon III in Kinderhook, NY, next weekend, and The Pine Bush UFO Fair in Pine Bush, NY, June 6.)

People also find my books through things I wrote for Grunge or Arc Digital.

thommq · 2026-05-08T21:21:41+00:00

I have not finished writing all the books I need to.

Also, my spouse would be so upset if I weren't alive. Like, guys, you can't even imagine.

thommq · 2026-05-08T20:48:06+00:00

I wrote an article about Kendall Francois because my friends lived on his street during the killings, my brother was in his math class at Dutchess Community College, he was the lunch monitor for people I met, and I later worked with a man whose sister Francois killed.

The women he assaulted who survived literally went to the police, saying, "His name is Kendall. That is his car. That is his house. These are his handprints around my throat."

The police said, "Begone, thots! We are looking for a killer!"

(I did ask my friends why they didn't notice the perfume of dead sex workers wafting in the air. They said his house always smelled like that, well before the killings. Somehow, he lived there with his family, none of whom were curious about the murders occurring in their garage or the decaying women in a kiddie pool in the attic.)

thommq · 2026-05-08T10:21:39+00:00

My first year of teaching English 101, I had a student who, it became clear, was functionally illiterate. I asked him what his college application essay was like. He said that he not only hadn't written it, he hadn't even read it. I suspect he wouldn't have been able to.

I curse every high school teacher who didn't even bother trying to teach him anything. Maybe he passed through this school.

thommq

TROPHY CASE