Home of the Reverend Dare Cloud, excommunicado: Dallas writer, musician, gamer, & paranormal investigator. Jack of many trades; master of none. Paul Varjak-ing it since 1973. What a long, strange trip it’s been…
Brunch at Company Cafe on Lowest Greenville. It’s unusually quiet here.
This morning, I noticed a garbage truck just sitting on an empty parking lot, idling with a crew, and facing a minority school on a major street. Dallas trash trucks have AI cameras on top of them to “check our yards for code violations”.
Horse sh*t.
It’s the same reason that Dallas ISD police department has a fleet of ghost cars running traffic, even on the weekends when there isn’t any school. My theory is that they’re both using these resources to seek immigration violators on the down-low for our Trump-sucking governor. That chair puts him at a convenient mushroom-smooching height.
Has anyone checked his seat for a mobile glory hole? Just lower him down atop the flagpole like those hydraulic cars on Jefferson. Hit those switches, Gov. You do you.
The local news scratched the surface of one of these issues, but no one seems to care about following up. Is it going to take me risking my own safety by putting a camera into the faces of these typically protected municipal goons? I can almost bet they’re clueless to the potentially diabolical scheme in which they participate. I’ll run with that.
Geez.
There’s a used car salesman/baseball dad sitting at a table twenty feet away talking mad smack about his ex wife, his new step kid, her ex husband, etc. He’s incredibly loud, and his eyeballs are searching rapidly to see if anyone else is listening. Some kid named Ben tried to burn down his school with a microwave, just in case anyone wondered who did it.
Some other kid named Grant dared him.
Rule: break my Friday brunch-peace with your attention tactics, and there’s a miniscule chance I’ll make you famous in the eyes of someone you know. There’s no purpose for any of this. Just like the old days, when I did it out of love of the game. Not for chicks, clicks, or the biggest table at the book convention.
Oh, he just walked away from a table of empty mixed-drink glasses, and slammed the remnants of his finale on the way out the door. It’s 11 am; I feel you, homie. Also, he was there visiting with a couple. His vocal tone inflected noticeably when the male left the table, leaving the drunkard alone with his partner. They’re tapping on the side. I’ve played both sides of that game, too. That’s not a brag.
I’ve noticed in the rekindling of my craft that I have difficulty writing if music is coming from in-front of me; at my face. If I want music, it needs to be coming from the direction of my left ear only. It seems specific, but there must’ve been a point in my developmental stage when music came from the left side of my head. In hindsight, my bedroom gaming set up during middle and high school was like that wherever I lived. Stereo to my left, my NES or SEGA, with my right side cornered by a wall or piece of furniture. Kind of like a cave. Nothing’s changed; it’s like I can’t think straight unless everything is in its place. No flow; no go, even after all this time.
My entire life exists in that corner; writing, music, and gaming. Wealthy people put sh*t like that in its own room to impress others. Screw the neighbors; they don’t live there! What if I want to strum guitar and write lyrics at the same time? What if I’m gaming and I have a writing idea? I’ve actually done all three at once on a single occasion. It’s a den. Humans invented them in the seventies for smoking pot and listening to Pink Floyd. The Cloud Family Estate would be in hysterics with me running back and forth between three rooms!
Nah, it’s a condo. I have a corner.
I’d still have a corner whether it were a mansion or a storage shed, because I’ve tapped into my natural instincts via soldiering. They teach you to live this way. Trial and error will teach the same lesson involuntarily to prisoners. Anyone who doesn’t live as though a flood could occur at any moment (and it could), with their ‘everything’ scattered about all willy-nilly aren’t used to finding discomfort in the vicinity of conflict. To the trained, those people are referred to as targets. Like the guy in the restaurant; he probably thinks he could buy his way out of any trouble stirred-up by his boisterous comments. Today, he may be right. Tomorrow, he could be sitting next to a journalist trying to find out whose kid blew up the school microwave.
What if money lost its value, and all that’s left are air and opportunity?
Where have all the good times gone? Rhetorical question; everything is in the palm of our hand. Any reason we ever left the house is accomplished on the pooper, and none shall be the wiser. When you do decide to leave the house, you film things for those who didn’t go with you, proving you left the house. It makes them want to leave their den to do the same thing. It’s cool; you can stay home when they go. They’ll film it for you.
Challenge: grab three people. Leave your phones in your cars. Sit in a den, and listen to Pink Floyd. Pot is illegal in Texas, but you do you. You and those other three people are going to have the time of your lives invoking half-hearted conversations, because you’re wondering what’s happening on your phone. Did you win the lottery? Did your side-piece text the wrong app? Did HE die?
The invention of the smart phone was the destruction of humanity.
We know it, but I keep writing, and you keep reading, and the cycle continues. In transit, I’m now listening to all these old blues singers preach about what women do when they leave home. These songs would be so lame if they talked about tracking a chick on Instagram, and Tweeting about what’s going to happen to them when they get home.
Maybe that’s the answer to everything. No one has the blues anymore. If they did, their songs would be stupid. How much good art is wasted via Facebook drama?
As much as I’d prefer you purchase these directly from me, they’re also available through Amazon and various other book sellers.
To most, 1865 was an eye-opening year. The American Civil War was officially over and the soldiers fortunate enough to survive the bloody conflict returned home to collect the pieces of their former lives. To young Arizonan, Robert Jack, the fateful desert homecoming marked the end to all he once knew. Forgiveness is overrated. Death is final. Revenge, however, dances between the fine lines of mortality and eternity. Love always finds a way.
“Reading Jim Walker and the Redemption Hymn is equal parts quirky fun and riveting action. Cloud’s confident, entertaining voice draws the reader in like an old radio western: the perfect bite-sized story with a main character you’re ready to follow through every adventure he finds himself on. So, tune in next time…”
– Megan Stockton, author of Lovely, Dark & Deep
The history books would read that Jim Walker was brutally executed after the Battle of Goliad, but a few promises in the right ear blurred the contrast between blood and ink. Now an aging bounty hunter on the verge of retirement, his services are requested in the Northern Arizona Territory to solve the terrifying mystery of the Verde River Massacre. With guns from a local Deputy, courage from a saloon proprietor, and a deathbed confession from an all-too-familiar Medicine Woman, Jim sets off on what could be his final adventure. Will he lay the ghosts of his past to rest once and for all, or is he simply whistling his Redemption Hymn?
“Someone call DC and tell them this is how you write a female hero character!” – Lisa Lee Tone, Bibliophelia Templum
Angel Burns is a young firefighter with a shrouded history. During a routine night at work, she stumbles upon a demonic ceremony that brings her memories out of hiding – as well as her repressed supernatural powers. Angel soon learns her life was intended for things greater than extinguishing fires for mortals. Now on the payroll of the Vatican, Angel embarks upon an epic quest to protect the Gutenberg Bibles from evil. If successful, she will secure peace for generations. If she fails, the power of the ancient books will bestow an eternity of darkness upon all humanity!
Toby Liberman is nearing the end of his rope. After a fateful confrontation with his wife’s lover, he is chased into the woods only to be discovered by an unidentifiable creature. He is attacked and rendered unconscious. Upon waking at the scene of a gruesome triple homicide, Toby is arrested as the sole suspect and thrown into a jail cell with a strange man that knows way too much about his predicament. The stranger reveals to Toby that he now possesses the curse of the werewolf. Using his new-found strength to flee his captors, Toby begins to discover that things are not what they seem in the sleepy town of Twin Oaks, TX. Now hunted by law enforcement, as well as the town’s gun toting civilians, Toby seeks vengeance against his false accusers and embarks upon a quest to clear his name once and for all.
A Curse Beyond Comprehension. A Power Beyond Belief. A Girl Far From Home. Katie Liberman is your typical eighteen-year-old college student…or at least that’s what her family thinks. Picking up five years after the events of A Taste of Home, Katie has dropped out of school and embarked upon a dangerous quest to find Kurt Jimmerson, the New York City attorney responsible for her family’s werewolf curse. Unknown to her, the attorney’s grip on the ‘City That Never Sleeps’ is tighter than imagined and she’ll need any and all help available to be victorious. But… where do you find friends when you’re Far From Home?
Twin Oaks, Texas is at war! Taking place immediately after the Far From Home events in New York City, Katie Liberman has returned to rescue her birthplace from the clutches of her nemesis. As the paranormal battle of North vs. South rages in the shadows, the tiny town must decide to fight against the odds or become one with the darkness. Blood will be shed and only one will survive as the final battle of the Home Series concludes.
I know this is the part where I’m supposed to talk about the book, but I feel as though the synopsis needs its own preface to truly understand. 2023 was quite an eye-opening year! I began it by living my dream as a vintage steam locomotive fireman, but that dream was soon squashed thanks to my writing career. It won’t matter that you wrote your extreme horror offerings years ago and under a pen name. Also, it won’t matter that your publisher and author friends from days gone by express pleasantries and kind, nurturing words to your face, because they’ll clique-up and talk trash the minute you turn your back. F**k the biz, create. Create for art, not clicks. Click for love, not hate. Those are words true artists should have no issues living by, yet most seem to hide behind their keyboard shields, flinging ill-thought words of destruction toward once-trusted ears. Don’t pour something into everything; pour everything into something. Do it all by yourself if necessary. With any luck, 2024 will be the year of The Reverend. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but we’ll find out together. Anyway, here are a few short stories and poems I wrote as C. Derick Miller in 2023. I stole them from myself. Fair and square. Enjoy.
Poetry has always come naturally to me. Whether it is an expression of emotion toward someone I care about, or a display of humor pointed in the direction of those I loathe, it is my true outlet. Several of these works were written in a passenger seat while exploring the highways of the United States and somehow managed to survive “The Great Ex-Wife/Ex-Girlfriend Poetry Purge” of 2019. Others were penned during COVID-19 quarantine. Although it may not be the most epic poetry collection you’ve ever read, it all contains bits of blood and soul. You will feel something. Guaranteed.
“This profound collection of horror brings classic monsters into new light in the modern day” – B.L. Blankenship, God Walks The Dark Hills series.
The modern world is a crazy place. Worrying about childish politicians, empty grocery store shelves, and our pending membership to the “global disease of the week” club, it leaves very little time for the average reader to finish an entire novel. This is where Six from Five Seven: Short Stories from a Short Man comes in clutch! A story per day to keep the impending apocalypse away, with a single day left over to contemplate why you purchased this book in the first place. That sounds like an entertaining week when compared to the one you were destined to have regardless. What do a cursed husband, a privileged brat, a curious prostitute, a repressed savior, a vengeful son, and two hell-bound soldiers have in common? Their stories lie within the pages of this collection and invite you to tag along on their journeys of fate, redemption, and demise. When finished, you, dear reader, can hide this book inside your basement with the rest of those important documents you wished you’d never taken home. The FBI won’t be happy, but at least they’ll know you’re a cool person for owning a copy while conducting the raid. That must count for something, right? Let’s hope the judge thinks so!
Also, there’s a few other things not listed here that are floating around out there. Best of luck with the hunt.
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