Author Archives: Eric

For Charity

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More Futures for Ferals by Danielle Ackley-McPhail

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This series gets 5 stars – it’s a charity and this one actually contains one of my stories. Go – buy a copy because all the profits go to charity.

Rescue is not an easy calling, whether it is cats or some other species.
It is hard work with usually no pay, often not enough volunteers, and
very little thanks beyond (hopefully) the satisfaction of making life
better for another living creature. When donations are low, rescuers
draw on their own funds to take care of their temporary charges, and
not even just the basics of food, shelter, and necessities, but medical
costs or even end-of-life care.
This collection seeks to share some of that burden. The profits from
the campaign that funded these books have already been sent to A
Future for Ferals, a 501c3 registered charity, to mitigate the costs of
rescuing over fifty cats in one day from a hoarder house. Of the fifty
cats, only two had been neutered. The vet bill was over $4000 to neuter
the rest and take care of the necessary medical care some of the cats
needed resulting from neglect.



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Grief is Weird

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I have been struggling to post here. Grief is likely the biggest culprit in why I haven’t been able to. Grief is weird and hits when you’re not looking for it. I mean, there’s the immediate stuff. That’s the part most people recognize. Up front, right after the shock wears off. Tears, snot bubbles, and all the red faced terrible that goes with it. It’s expected and relatively understood.

It’s later. Sometime down the road, after the dust has settled and people have gotten back into their daily routines… there’s still this thing that can happen. Grief just keeps showing up.

There’s insomnia. That’s a fun one. You just can’t sleep because something’s not right and it will never be all the way right again. You look terrible, your eyes are already bloodshot and this is just piling on. There’s all the things still jumbling around in your head. Your brain won’t shut down and even when you think you’re too exhausted to go on it pops up some other thing that you needed to do and forgot.

There’s the diet plan – or lack of plan. You eat take out more times in a month than you have in the past five years. The things you paid attention to slide to the side and things don’t really taste as good as they did before. In our case particularly, we had a host of dietary restrictions we were working with for my wife. Lists of things we could and couldn’t get. None of that mattered any more. That’s a stutter when you look at the prices you had been paying and realize you don’t have to now.

Even that settles after a while. You sort of try to get a new routine. You figure out things, make lists of paperwork and stop missing deadlines. Changes are there, but they’ve settled down and day to day function happens.

Then the stupidest detail slams into you, or somebody very close to you and you’re a weeping mess again.

I woke up to find my daughter asleep in her mother’s chair one morning rather than in bed. I was a mess for days and I didn’t know what to say to her about it.

We ordered pizza. I thought it would be a great idea to add dessert, so ordered the brownies. She opened the brownies box and it was cut into nine pieces. Perfectly divisible for the three of us and now we’re crying all over again because nine divided in half means Beck’s not here. You can’t just do 3, 3 and 3. Half a brownie is terrible.

So, I’m working on it. 95 days as of the first of November when I’m writing this. Just outside those 90 day business windows. Too long and somehow just as if it was yesterday. I’ve been told that things get better. I’m starting to see changes, but I don’t know that I would call any of them better. We will see as time marches on. We’re heading into the holiday season and it’s going to be rough.

I will get back to this. I will continue to tell stories and to write and play games. It will just take time, because grief is weird.

Missing Parts

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I broke down and went looking for stuff on the internet. Almost everything out there is aimed at women – widows as opposed to widowers. I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense given that women tend to live longer. Usually. Except when they don’t.

People keep asking how I am. How the hell do you answer that? I’ve taken to saying “I’m still here…”

One of the things that I’ve struggled to put into words about this massive loss is a lack of intimacy. Not just sex stuff. While that is ‘intimate’ that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about all the little things of a shared life. Tiny moments from every day. Shared life experience that’s not there with anyone else. Even when Beck was sick and couldn’t do much she was here. I could sit and smile and hold her hand while we talked about dumb shit we used to do. She knew every part of me and I knew every part of her. We spent more than 30 years having dinners, going to the gas station, having fancy nights out or throwing parties (then clinging to each other at the end). That is gone now and it hurts – more than I ever understood what hurting could mean. I’m a fucking wreck just typing this. I haven’t cried in decades until this summer. Now I can’t stop. Everyone tells me that’s expected but that answer doesn’t help. I don’t have my person – the one who was always there for stuff like this.

I asked at one point, “Who will I travel with now?” and friends pointed to my daughter. I know I am biased, but I’m going to say it anyway – my daughter is a delight. I love her like mad and going places with her is great. While being great is true, it’s not the same as being able to take a romantic vacation to a mountainside in Tennessee. It’s not the same as waking up with somebody in a beach hotel and wandering down to a brunch with crepes and mimosas because you’re going to stay in and just be with each other all day. This is all of the intimate crushed up into a condensed time frame. Going out someplace new and creating new memories.

As my wife continued with her health struggles over the years the adventures changed in tone and type. They were less active and more thoughtful. Things we didn’t do for various reasons, but we were still out there. It was us against the world, wherever in the world we were. She struggled, but we were together. Toward the end Beck’s conversations tended to be less conversational, and she became all but a shut in. Her ability to walk deteriorated under mysterious circumstances and she spent a lot of time in her chair in the living room. She was still here.

I would take any day of that for any price right now. I am missing part of me and I don’t know how to fix it. Like any wound, I suspect it will heal over time. I’m just not sure how long that will be. Eventually I hope to post more regularly here – but I don’t have any spirit to get there right now. We’ll see.

Powerful

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I have told a number of people over time that I am a true child of media. The MTV generation for sure. I have this weird collection of film clips and quotes stuck in my head that pop up all the time in reference to other things.

An example is from Conan The Barbarian, the 1982 film with Arnold and James Earl Jones. The ‘riddle of steel’ scene always stuck with me. “What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?” They call it the power of flesh, but it is about the people and how they’re connected.

Rebecca, in her life, wielded great power. She wasn’t interested in being some kind of cult leader, she just knew that people needed to be together. She connected with people, sometimes even when they didn’t particularly feel like they wanted it. Sometimes when they didn’t feel they deserved it. She was direct and clear about who she was, and brought that to her relationships as well. People were drawn to her.

On the day of Rebecca’s celebration of rememberance a stranger to all of us walked in. He introduced himself and gave me a card with a letter inside. I was stunned. Here was a man who had been walking past the funeral home and saw the announcement of the celebration by chance. As it turned out, he did know Rebecca. 36 years ago Rebecca saw somebody who needed a friend and extended her power. She reached out to a ‘loner’ and made such an impression that decades later she was important to him.

I’m sharing the (slightly redacted) letter here because I think it’s important to speak to the power of connecting with people. Rebecca was special in that way, and we need her kind of power more than ever now. Reach out to people. Connect. Show your love. Take those chances. It might matter more than you will ever know.

Founding Member – Dear Crabby

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This was originally written for and published in the Watch The Skies Fanzine, the August 2025 edition.

In the time since our last issue, one of our longest standing members passed away. Rebecca Hardenbrook was with the group since the beginning, though her attendance at the physical meetings had been less in recent months. She read, debated and laughed her way through many of the groups reading choices. She attended the extra events like movies or watch parties and was a long standing convention attendee as well. She latched onto fandom and wouldn’t let go, even going as far to publish some fan fiction on Archive of Our Own.

It came as a surprise to some that she was the voice behind a long running piece in Watch The Skies titled “Dear Crabby”. The concept being that of an advice column, similar to Dear Abbey, but with science fiction related themes and… less than political responses. The questions and responses ran from 2014 all the way into 2022.

To quote another member of the group, “I remember how fearless Beck was and how that one particular smile would begin to grow as she listened to someone full of themselves or just didn’t have a solid sense of reality. It would form on her face like an archer pulling back on their bow, and I knew whatever she launched at the person would be DEVASTATING, but in the most loving way imaginable. She did not suffer bullies or fools.”

Crabby’s identity was a loosely guarded secret so that nobody would feel unjustly targeted or as if the response to their question was a personal attack… well, no more than would be expected from an advisor whose monicker literally meant irritable.

From “I hate to make light of the situation but, does it matter?” in response to a question about smashing photons in an experiment to “you do realize that life on other planets could conceivably consist of what amounts to a sentient mold, right?” when responding to a question about UFOs and visitors from other planets, Crabby’s responses had something for everyone along the way. That something might have been thoughtful, or it might have been thoughtful combined with acidic, but the responses were genuinely her own. The archive of her work is still on the Watch The Skies page dedicated to her HERE.

Rebecca will be missed. This world, and those others populated by fandom are less without her.

Eulogy

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One of the hardest things to do was stand in front of family, friends and coworkers to deliver some words at the time of remembrance for Rebecca. I struggled to finish what I was saying.

Our friends and family also gave their own words and they were wonderful. There is a recording of that, and I may post a link to it later. Below are the words I spoke that day:

Eulogy is a silly word with the ‘e’ and the ‘u’ and the ‘g’ and it just doesn’t fit. It’s the wrong word for describing Beck. There are a number of other words that should be used to describe her. Some of those words are –

Defiant.

If you wanted Beck to do something, simply tell her she was NOT allowed to do that thing. She would tell you precisely what you should do with your opinion and then head directly out to do what you said she should not. This is important because it is how we met. David said she was not allowed to meet me, so she threw her biker jacket and heavy boots on and stomped into the store where I worked to talk to me. We chatted, she was lovely and I asked her out. She said yes.

Passionate.

From dating, to marriage and beyond if Beck felt it, she felt it strongly. Opinions, personal or political were always ready. It was never anger, it was towering rage. It was not care, it was deep love. There was no middle ground when it came to her feelings. It was in part of the reason the song for our first dance at our wedding reception was ‘Storybook Love’ from the soundtrack of the film “The Princess Bride”. Those lyrics had deep meaning to her.

My love is like a storybook story
But it’s as real as the feelings I feel

Inappropriate.

If there was a crass, dirty joke to be made you can be sure Beck would step up. She was proud to deliver the F bomb at any occasion, or plainly describe the state of things. One memorable example was at my sister’s wedding. Ellen asked us to take care of greeting people and having them sign the guest book. When my mom’s dear friend Vesta arrived she asked Beck “How are you today?” Without missing a beat Beck’s reply was, “I’m bloated and my feet hurt in these shoes… how are you?” She was not always met with similar replies.

Caring.

Rebecca was always interested in helping other people. One of the things she most enjoyed was trying to make things better for other people. For a long time that meant cooking for everyone. There was never a shortage of cooking going on. She found GISH – the greatest international scavenger hunt and all its associated charities. She loved to participate in that event and would take a week off from work to do it. Giving and caring and doing goofy things along the way because caring didn’t mean being dull about it.

Strong.

The defining thing in Beck’s life became her health. As one of the nurses at the ICU said after I’d recounted her med list and her health history, “Wow, she has really gone through it”. I know most of you know the numbers now, but 10 major surgeries, including 6 for her heart, 2 strokes and too many hospital stays to count is a lot – and she just kept powering on. She lived these last years with a timer over her head that she couldn’t read. It was a struggle here, near the end but that is absolutely NOT how she would want to be remembered. She would want to be remembered for everything else.

Today should be about sharing stories, particularly the inappropriate ones. Let’s talk about her roles as mother, wife, partner, friend, activist, charity champion and how she will be missed by her family, friends and community. There will forever be an unfilled seat at our table, the absence of her light in the room and in our lives cannot be replaced. She had an impact for good in everyone’s lives she touched. She will be deeply missed.

To bring things full circle, a quote from The Princess Bride,

“Death cannot stop true love, all it can do is delay it for a while”.

Thank you all for being here for her.

She Is Gone.

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I’ve had a post, or series of posts up on social media for a few weeks now. I think I need to post this here, for ME on my website. I need to own this and keep it.

My wife of 30 years passed away in July. There’s no easy way to put that. She is gone.

Social media held a lot of messages and updates and information about arrangements and things like that. I think this post needs to give a little more, or rather a different view of things if not necessarily more.

My wife had health related struggles for many years. I’d posted about it and even published a piece about taking care of your own health during that time. She’d had more than a dozen hospital stays over the course of the past 20 years. Her first open heart surgery was back in the early 2000s when my daughter was just over a year old. Things always seemed to bounce back. We were always lucky I guess. We knew… but we didn’t know. The chance of everything going wrong was always there, it just never managed to actually happen.

Intellectually we were prepared. Physically and emotionally we struggled and muddled along. About 3 years ago Beck had her first major stroke. It took her a few days to come back around and start the recovery process. She did recover, mostly. She was never quite the same in a lot of ways. How we acted, the things we did and places we went changed and morphed over time.

On July 26th Beck started showing signs of having another stroke. I kept asking her what she was feeling and telling her she was worrying me. She couldn’t get up and walk without help, she started to lose the function of her hands. I asked her again what she felt was happening. The ambulance arrived, off we went to the hospital again. Somehow this felt different. There were other, small factors that were adding in here. They rushed her into surgery that Saturday night trying to relieve the pressure in her head. Nothing worked.

Three agonizing days with no real responses or movement or anything. A massive hemorrhagic stroke. We made the choice to go forward with her wishes of organ donation. It took until July 29th for her to be all the way gone.

Her last coherent words were, “I love you”.

I have cried more in the last month than I have in the last 20 years combined. Sitting here and typing things just doesn’t seem to cover it. I am wreckage. Almost a month along and I am only mostly functional. I’m planning to try to put more things here – but it will take time.

Published again?

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Maybe.

I had submitted a short story to this collection and it was accepted. This was… I’m going to say years ago at this point. Maybe 2 or more. I honestly don’t remember.

Friends were at the home convention for the group that was planning to publish this anthology… and surprised me with this little gem:

Yes, they spelled my name wrong. I’ll be sure to message and get that sorted out – right after I find out how I get more details about this upcoming Kickstarter and what that means for the rights to my story…

Cover Piece

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I’m still squeezing in time to do graphic work for Watch The Skies. This was the cover of the July fanzine. Normally I go for some kind of image inspired directly from the work, but I hadn’t gotten far enough by the deadline, so I worked to come up with something more abstract.

Solo Game

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Sometimes taking the time to play a game is just the sort of rest and recuperation one needs. Sometimes when you need this, there’s nobody else around, making the game options limited.

At a recent board game day in my local community I picked up a single player game. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured I’d take a shot. The creator seemed like a local person and the game looked well put together. The game is called Eleventh Beast. This game is set up as a solo monster hunting game set in London in the mid 1700s. I’d only ever “played” pick your own path style single player games, so I wanted to do this one right.

I grabbed the printable map and tokens from the website. I cut out the tokens, grabbed the required dice and a deck of cards with the jokers taken out. I dug up some mood music to accompany my solo game. Note paper at hand, I cracked open the pamphlet and started in on the rules. I also felt some extra ‘flavor’ was in order so I put on some music as a background. I recommend the soundtrack to the old movie “Gothic” if you can come up with it. Really felt like it fit with the game – and ends with a tune declaring that the devil is an Englishman.

The rules made sense, but there wasn’t any… cushion for first timers I guess is a way to say it. I had to just start and figure it out (play fast, make mistakes – a common refrain among our friends). Having said that, it didn’t take long to figure it out. There are only 15ish pages to the whole thing and it’s pretty straightforward once you get started. Rolling dice, placing tokens and pulling cards I worked my way through my first game. I won by defeating the monster with only one wound on my tab.

It is a neat concept. Random card pulling and dice rolls give the action a little bit of unpredictability. It was easy. I’m afraid that I did something wrong as it seemed both shorter and easier than it was described. Part of that might be my lack of detail in the notes department. I could see where the flavor would really work for somebody who wanted to invest in it, but once I figured out what I needed for each step, my notes became a short hand code. It has a level of replay ability, but now that I know what I’m doing it would be a quick hit whenever I wanted to play a solo game. If there were a rule I would change or add, I think it would be a randomization factor for the monster and the player tokens after an attack is resolved. Basically once I’d collected a handful of rumors that turned out to be true (and therefore tools) I stood on the monster and duked it out until I rolled to win. I think pushing the monster and the hunter to random spaces would add to the challenge and allow for a little more strategy.

It was a fun diversion and I’m really glad I took the chance and picked it up. It’s on the shelf, ready to go (with far less prep) for the next time I feel like a solo game.