Problems I Never Thought I’d Have – by Kate Paulk

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*Sorry this is so late.  Last night I had issues loading Kate’s post so I went to bed and thought “I’ll put it up at six tomorrow”.  Well, it’s nine my time and I just rolled out of bed. :/  Yeah, antibiotics working — stop glaring.  I really don’t get ill on purpose! — but I guess there’s a sleep thing that’s needed.  Oh, and Kate’s con books are here.  And yeah, she desperately needs new covers.  It was one of our very first one.  The second is slightly better, but still needs help.*

 

When I started being published, I started discovering problems I never thought would be problems. Not the sensible problems, like what to do with that teensy trickle of pennies that writing brought in. No, I’m talking about the flat-out, mind-bogglingly weird problems.

 

Most of these relate to the Con vampire universe, and the way that ‘verse leaks like a busted sieve. I have seriously lost count of the number of times a throwaway gag line turns out to nail someone’s personality and situation – when I don’t even know the person. It’s that bloody scary.

 

Chatting about this with friends, one of them suggested it’s precognition. Except I don’t believe in precognition. It, however, seems to believe in me, and believe hard enough to make stuff happen.

 

It’s got so I’m wondering if I need to bring holy water to the next con I go to in case I meet any editors there. Because I’m getting scared that they really are demons. Minor demons, sure, but the amount of petty evil I’ve heard from editors at cons is… well… worrisome.

 

Trouble is, I’m not a believer in the strictest sense, so I’m not sure holy water would actually work for me. But I swear if I ever see Jim at a con, I’m running so fast you’ll see the dust cloud (and believe me, at my weight and fitness level running is not something that happens).

 

If that’s not enough, I’m discovering avatars of my characters in places I never thought to look. Everyone here knows that the fiction separating our gracious hostess and Natalia Bosting is thinner than tissue paper, and of course the family is the family (this was by Sarah’s request I might add – although I’ve managed to get that more accurate than is comfortable in ways I didn’t know anything about at the time), but I’ve recently met Lil’s avatar (who can reveal herself or not as she chooses) and despite denials I have my suspicions about Raph. Let’s just say that angel is flexible.

 

Since before this woo-woo shit started happening to me, I would have said I was the least psychically inclined person in the universe, it’s seriously disturbing. I don’t know how it’s happening. I have no idea how I can manage to accurately do writer-voodoo on people I’ve never met, and in more than one case never knew existed.

 

It’s creepy. And it’s got me… not quite scared to go to conventions, but worried about what I’m going to encounter there. I mean, this is a gathering of Odds letting their Odd out to swing in the breeze as it were. Most are both highly intelligent and fractured in some way (yes, that includes me). If you believe in that kind of thing, it’s sort of an invitation for unfriendly sorts to drop by and join the party.

 

And being unfriendly, such sorts tend not to want to leave when the party’s over.

 

I’ve been at cons with people who left me wanting to scrub all over with bleach to get rid of the feeling I’d been doused with slime. There have been other people who left me certain that I did not want to be in the same room as them ever again. It was a bit like there was no “there” there… On the surface there’s nothing wrong with these people. But they give me the horrors, and I don’t know why. (I am not naming names. I could be wrong or oversensitive or something. And damn it, I don’t believe this kind of shit. I just also can’t deny what it felt like).

 

All of which leaves me with an interesting and disturbing dilemma. The more I do in the con ‘verse, the stronger the effect gets, and the weirder the side effects.

 

So, do I load up with blessed jewelry from any religion that doesn’t explicitly prevent outsiders from enjoying the benefits? Do I pretend nothing’s happening? Or do I run screaming into the night?

 

Nah. Not that last option. It’s too bloody cold out.

167 thoughts on “Problems I Never Thought I’d Have – by Kate Paulk”

      1. Why don’t fictional character’s know their place? It’s very annoying when they insist on being real.

        Like

        1. Perhaps he is real and is using Kate to tell us his stories. He visits Kate in her dreams so she just *thinks* he’s a character. [Very Very Big Grin]

          Like

          1. This is certainly one of the things that has stuck to me over the years from the one time I read “The Cat Who Walked Through Walls”, but I have sometimes imagined that that every story is true, and that writers are “channeling” the stories of those who are alive elsewherewhen, and that, while we might get a few of the details wrong (such as time, place, etc), the stories we “create” are nonetheless as real as anything we might encounter in real life…

            Like

              1. But at what point does this possibility end? Do you have to tell the story to someone else? Do you have to create a complete story with closure? Or does it happen any time someone imagines something that did not happen in their reality?

                I would probably have a nervous breakdown if I found out all my imaginary events turned real somewhere. Even though I try to keep a fairly tight rein on it, I don’t know if I could handle knowing how much suffering I had caused, even though that’s a small portion of the whole.

                Like

                1. Nope, by this idea, you didn’t cause the suffering. You just reported the suffering.

                  Like

              2. No real need for “channeling”. If there are a sufficiently large number of universes, then any scenario that can happen, should happen, somewhere. That assumes that the physics of the story setting are such that a self-sustaining universe operating on those physics is possible of course:-).

                Like

              1. Perhaps they’re partially correct: you are equally real (alternatively, equally unreal.) Roger Zelazny may have based his Amber chronicles on this realization.

                Like

            2. Mine tried that. I got all snarky. “Oh, you write boring, pointless, plot-less Grey Goo works of literature?” That shut him up. Now he’s taking over a work in progress, now doubt in revenge for the insult.

              Like

  2. I’ll never forget my startlement when I read the first one, and how well you hit on something I identified with. But then again, they are so much fun to read! Although they do make me feel a little nervous about cons no-Liberty, I will admit.

    Like

  3. Basically you fired an arrow into the air, and while it came to earth, you know not where, the guy it hit came running up to you with an arrow sticking out of his head.

    Like

  4. I think we writers train ourselves to tap into our subconscious. What our subconsciouses are tapping into is anyone’s guess. The collective subconscious, the matrix, God, the void, dark energy, ancestral memories . . . The Library.

    Like

  5. Yep. Holy jewelry and talismans, candle magic (they can be bought premagicked, you only need to burn them) done in your hotel room, protective oils and all that. (Nods a couple of times) I’d recommend all of them. Just in case. But stick to the pure white magic stuff, grey, not to mention black, should be avoided if you haven’t studied them. Especially black, that just for experts who have studied for years. I don’t practice it, although I sometimes go with grey, I’m nowhere diligent enough a student to get the necessary knowledge to dare trying.

    And most of it, if done right, should work whether you believe any of it or not. That includes commercially made stuff, provided the makers actually do the necessary rituals. :)

    Like

        1. Are you quite sure that “burning sage” refers to the herb rather than a person of wisdom and calm judgment? Might want to burn both, just in case.

          Like

            1. Admitted — I restrained myself from asking “But where are you going to find a sage at a convention?” as they two classes are essentially non-intersecting. Sorta like “gentlemen” and “gentlemen’s clubs.”

              Like

        2. Yea – I thought you’d like some ideas from the North American folks. I noticed when I am different Countries that sometimes my standbys don’t work there. ;-) Maybe it’s in my head, maybe it’s Maybelline ;-)

          Like

        3. Another idea would be to find the tradition used in your family line… I am mostly Norse so some of the jewelry and runes do help me for protection purposes. If you are more something else, you should look into protection practices of that culture. It might be a stronger help to you.

          Like

          1. Celtic/Viking mix for the most part, here, with possible crypto Jewish. One branch of the ancestry hails from the Isle of Man, another from Cornwall. There’s also Scots and English, so there’s no shortage of the Celt/Norse mix.

            Like

            1. My email is cynbagley (at) Hotmail dot com. I would be more than happy to give you my thoughts on the subject. I can’t help you on Celtic information because I don’t have an affinity for it.

              Like

          2. Heh. My protective talisman bears runes that, in certain light, seem to spell out “9mm”. I’m thinking of going full-Irish and, when funding is available, upgrading to “1911” and “.45”. :)

            Like

    2. That’s good to know… I’ve taken to wearing amber jewelry all the time, which helps some.

      And just in case starts to sound pretty good when the weird is happening to you.

      Like

      1. Try adding silver and iron. Steel knives can work as well as iron too, something like a knife or scissors or anything else with a blade have been used as a protective talismans for a long time, and in many cultures (plus they have more practical uses as well). Maybe if you can find one with silver decorations, and with big enough a guard that it also has the form of a cross?

        Like

          1. I’d have thought that a silver gavel would be more of a problem for an undead emperor disguised as an attorney.

            Like

        3. Kate, if you message Michael Z. Williamson (sharppointythings.com), makes knives and swords to order. Morrigan, his daughter (and my adopted granddaughter) is into jewels, and could maybe pick out some jewels to set in the handles. (She’s learning the art of knife/sword making, among other things, so it would be a good project for her to help on.)

          Like

          1. That’s a neat suggestion – although the last I heard he’s booked so far out that he’s not taking orders. Alas, me being in the northeast means my con circuit rarely if ever matches up with his.

            Like

          1. Basically, the softer the stone, the more it absorbs instead of shedding. (I’m not sure if amber actually is stone or still resin — it might depend on the type of amber.) Another thing, when you’re not wearing your items, keep them wrapped in real silk to keep random influences off of them.

            Like

    3. To quote the philosopher Han Solo
      “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”.

      Like

        1. In the next movie, a follower of that “hokey religion” “took” a blast from his blaster and then took the blaster away from him. [Wink]

          Like

              1. I doubt that the scriptwriter is the solution — reference to a blonde starlet “so dumb she thought the way to get ahead in Hollywood was to sleep with the writer — so much as the Director or Producer. (Heck, the Lighting Director may have more to do with success than the writer.)

                Like

            1. Vader won’t have put himself in that situation if the “good guys” had a chance of winning. Vader may have been evil but he wasn’t stupid. [Wink]

              Like

  6. Not so much people for me, but technology. Little throwaway bits of super-cool tech I put in for SF decor, and then it goes and happens in the real world. Bloodglue — I even have some in my first aid kit now. Second-skin spacesuits have been invented. Isn’t this fun?

    Like

    1. Ooh, I have a spacesuit that is going into the story I’m working on that I HOPE will be a good idea that will be created. The second-skin suit, though, is actually something they’ve been working on for a long time. I think the first time I read about ideas on how to make one was nearly 30 years ago.

      Like

  7. When i was young, I was a firm believer in paranormal phenomena. I bought books to study how to bring out the abilities, I practiced the things I read on many nights (I didn’t have any that prescribed illegal or dangerous activities, thank goodness), all to no avail. So I gave up believing I had any.

    Later, whenever I talked to people who claimed to have these capabilities, their words came across hollow, and they gave the impression of having fooled themselves, especially since any time any one of them claimed something, for example, that something was going to happen, no proof ever emerged. So I stopped believing that it even existed.

    Still, there are the occasional things: I always seem to miss being injured far more than I should (riding in a car that got broadsided by a pickup, I got a bruised arm and a scratch on my nose, my dad happened to see the wall of clay mud I was working at the base of starting to separate and warned me in the nick of time, etc), while I can’t seem to get ahead, whenever I am getting into financial trouble, something pulls me out at the last minute (and right now, I’m scared – I’m probably as close to the edge as I have ever been, and my dad has been sick. PLEASE don’t let that be the resolution to my money troubles, my mom already did that 4 years ago), and of course, the cases of people seeing me in places I’ve never been. So, I don’t know what to think.

    Like

    1. Wayne, I don’t know what to think, either. The things that happen are well past the old “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action” saying.

      Like

      1. Oh, and I forgot to mention the niece’s son, who never met my mother (who was a redhead of fine and narrow feature when she was younger), who was talking and laughing in his room, and when my niece went in to see what he was up to, there was no one there. She asked him who he was playing with, and he told her it was “gabby” (my mother), and that she looked like Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

        Like

      2. Heh. Talking about repeating patterns, I have been getting the same hexagrams from iChing lately most times I throw the coins, or even when I use the programs online. I just can’t figure out what they might mean. Encouraging point, most of the repeating ones are very favorable, like 14, ‘possessions in great measure’ but my life in general right now certainly does not fit that nor the few others I keep getting – no supreme success and wealth in sight yet. :)

        Although my situation is better than it was half a year ago, if only marginally. One problem with these things seems to be that the whatever which operates the system does not have much of an idea of what things like ‘great wealth’ might mean to us here when we are talking about the material things. So that ‘great wealth’ the cards or iChing or whatever keeps promising you might well mean something like a windfall which allows you to pay the bills this months, if only just, rather than hitting the jackpot in a lottery which is what _I_ would call ‘great wealth’. :D

        Like

  9. Kate I am one of your hardcore fans– so far I have read all three of the con novels three times. Plus I did read the other books once. But the cons keep drawing me in when I need to relax and laugh.

    BTW welcome to my universe. I dream people before I meet them. My first of these started when I was around five years old so I at least have had some time to get used to the idea. ;-)

    Like

    1. Yeah, the things I’ve had happening since I was five, I’m pretty well used to. This is… rather more recent. Obviously I’m not used to it yet.

      Like

            1. It’s a rather larger club than I thought it would be. This isn’t something I talk about often, since it sounds pretty bloody crazy.

              Like

              2. Yeah. I tend to keep quiet about such things because, well, trying to explain to someone that that necklace really, really should not go home with them, no matter how fetching it might look with their coloring, and no, you can’t go into more detail . . . yup. Works about as well as trying to explain why I have to go out at night around the winter solstice and 12th Night. I just do. It’s one of those Alma things, OK?

                Like

                1. Yeah. Like why there are some places I refuse to touch anything. (Devil’s Den at Gettysburg – that was flat *scary* when my balance went wonky and I reached out to steady myself. Hand on one of the boulders and a flash to what it had been like I think shortly after the battle… a crapload of fear and pain. Been back to the battlefield twice and will not touch anything there.)

                  Like

                  1. Gettysburg (the battlefield AND the town) is like that. I’m not what you would call a superstitious guy, not skeptical but not believing (optimistically pessimistic….I believe in the possibility), but the one time I’ve visited Gettysburg, heck, even *I* could sense there was something, not unlike a thick wool blanket, laying over the area. I’ve been in the countryside here in Texas where you can be 100 yards from a highway and its still so quiet and peaceful that you don’t really notice the traffic….Gettysburg was…well….hushed. Silent. Quiet in a way that cemeteries are quiet. I’ve noticed that in a couple of places (Andersonville POW camp was like that). I would dearly love to go back again someday.

                    Like

                    1. Parents visited Dachau when Dad was stationed in Germany in the early sixties. They said that there was still a pall over the place. That they could just feel the darkness and depression. Said that the whole place was dreary and gloomy, and felt like a cloud was over the entire place. They will tell you that the sun was shining outside and when they went in, it was like the place was just covered with a black cloud. Brother (who was born over there) went through Dachau in the nineties said that it was the same when he went through, and that you can still smell the stench of death there.

                      I really rarely talk about this outside the family, but…there’s rarely a week that goes by without having something happen, or being someplace, or doing something that I didn’t see in a dream. I think the longest period between the dream and the event has been about 12 or 13 years. Literally down to the detail of being able to tell you what someone is going to do from the second they walk through the door. Growing up, it really scared the crap out of me. Now? I consider it a test of my faith. Well, that and chalk it up to the miniscule amount of Cherokee blood in my veins. :)

                      Like

                    2. I’ve heard that said about Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and other concentration camps, as well as WW1 battlefields such as Verdun and Ypres. Being a military history buff, I’d LOVE the opportunity to visit those places, myself.

                      Never really believed much in the power of dreams to foretell future events, until I shared part in a mass-dream (spread out over a week or two) while out on deployment in…er…”international waters”. Over a short period of time, a bunch of guys in my watch-section all dreamed various themes of our sub getting into an accident and sinking. Mine was weird, but it did involve the sub going vertical and us having to fight our way out (similar to “Poseidon Adventure”). Near the end of the deployment, our Skipper (a flaming idiot) got us into a position where we were rammed by a tanker, and a very fortunate series of coincidences, and a junior officer on watch who was willing to tell the Skipper he was wrong and countermand his direct orders (several times) allowed us to be hit in probably the only place that would not have resulted in the eventual sinking of our boat. Lots of undies needed washing following that incident (USS Drum, Hong Kong harbor, ’95).

                      Like

                    3. Bruce: Hubby and I drove by Buchenwald to go to Weimar (genealogy and literary purposes). You could feel the darkness even just driving by on the freeway.

                      Like

                    4. What if the purpose of the Nazi Totenkampfen was dark magics, opening a portal to the outer darkness to allow some one of The Great Old Ones’ return? Hitler not being driven by antisemitism (well, not solely) but a nearly Judenfrei Europe being a necessity for the portal’s operation?

                      What if Katyn Wood was also part of the scheme?

                      And what if those rents in (our) reality remain while the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Jews from mainland Europe through less bloody means is further weakening the fabric?

                      Sounds like Larry Correia’s oeuvre but anybody who wants to play there …public domain, right?

                      Like

                    5. Well – some historians claim that Hitler was dealing with dark magics and Hollywood has jumped on the idea –Indiana Jones movies as prime example. Even Dean Koontz jumped on that idea for one of his horror novels. So maybe– Plus I have been reading lately that there has been some proof of occult activity by the Nazi leadership. I don’t know … but I have wondered. If you go to an American gravesite in Europe (I have been to a few) it is light and full of peace. If you go to the adjacent gravesite where the German soldiers are buried, it is dark and sad.

                      Like

                    6. RabidAllen– I heard about that incident. I was in Panama at the time. Did you finally get hit in the rear? Sorry to say but a lot of the skippers in the Navy have needed “brains.” My dad talks about one skipper he had who was seasick all the time so they would go from port to port and didn’t leave sight of land. The officer needed a ship command before he could be promoted *sigh. This was after the Korean Conflict btw. His Vice was actually in command mostly.

                      Like

                    7. @RES: Google “Thule Society”. Hitler was known to have consulted with astrologists before making policies…one of the reasons that I tend to claim that Hitler was one of our greatest allies during WW2 (he kept making contradictory policies, hamstringing his armies, and shooting his most effective generals. Or poisoning them, in the case of Rommel.).

                      @CynBagley: I had a few skippers who were complete bricks, but my second boat’s CO is, last time I checked, a vice-admiral working with the JCOS. He was a sharp guy, knew his boat forwards and backwards, was pure Navy through and through. Much as I hated going to sea, if I had to deploy again, I would definitely want to go to sea under his command.

                      Like

    2. I used to think I was the only one. I dream snippets of conversations, actually. Bits of scenes, in some detail, actually. Occasionally useful.

      Back when I was in Christian ministry on a college campus, I dreamt a conversation with a total stranger who asked me a really specific question, that bugged me enough that I thought it over, did a little research, and had a good answer for him when I met him later that week and had exactly that conversation.

      Like

    1. You have a point there. Do you know any lightweight exorcists? I’m rather out of shape, so carrying a big one around isn’t an option.

      Like

      1. What you want, there, is your Popeil Pocket Exorcist — lightweight, convenient, resolves most common possessions.

        Some people prefer the Swiss Army Exorcist, a useful all-purpose demon expellient, although the Leatherman Multi-Exorcist is growing in popularity. Both are convenient all purpose exorcism tools, often capable of surprisingly heavy-duty exorcism.

        Like

          2. My regrets — apparently the Powers That Be Word Press selected your question as one to not transmit to my email and I only discovered it now. Draw what conclusions you will.

            Unless you see an advert for one of these items on your telly late at night the only way to acquire one is through human connection: you have to know the right people.

            People, who know people,
            Are the luckiest people in the world.

            Like

  12. Never mind the jewelry, just carry a bottle of Tullamore Dew around with you. It’s holy enough to keep any supernatural baddies away, and a bottle full of inflammable liquid should be sufficient to keep the sub-supernatural baddies at bay.

    Plus, if you don’t run into any baddies, you can share the whiskey with the goodies you do meet. If you do follow this plan anywhere in the Seattle area, let me know. I’m good. Maybe goodish. Well, I’m all right.

    Whiskey: Thwarting evil and making friends since the 12th century.

    Like

      1. You migth want to try some different brands of firewater. Brandy, Rum, Calvados … see which one is better.

        Like

            1. Koskenkorva. Okay, that’s nearly the same as Finlandia vodka, which is the fancy version sold to people who are too refined to touch the fur hat version, and may be easier to find over there (‘karvalakki’ = fur hat is a Finnish expression which kind of means the same as redneck, except it’s used for the products our local versions of rednecks use rather than the people themselves, something that is simple, unadorned, cheap and practical, and sometimes but not always also cheap in the negative meaning).

              Like

  13. A lot of paranormal events become clear once you accept that sequentiality is an illusion and Time is actually simultaneous. Precognition, for example, is just such a phenomenon.

    As for inventing characters who prove too close to reality, given the need for characters to be realistic/coherent and given a basic understanding of human nature and given the significant number of attendees at cons it is explicable by random chance, akin to predicting a tall dark stranger. This is especially so once you have preconditioned your intuition by installing certain templates into which new acquaintances can be slotted.

    The “empty and/or demon inhabited folk you meet at cons and elsewhere are real, sadly. There are only a certain number of human sould in existance and unless we manage to reduce the population we will have more and more human-type meat-suits being piloted by the souls of cats, dogs, pigs* and minor demons.

    *Sure, and where do you think politicians come from?

    Like

    1. On behalf of the noble swine, I take umbrage at your characterization of politicians. Pigs are useful and have provided billions of people sustenance over the years. If anything the soul of the politicians is the diametric opposite of a pig’s.

      Like

    2. Actually, I thought the politicians came from minor demons (and vice versa). As Jeff says, pigs are useful (BACON!). Politicians, not so much. And as the cannibal said to the tourist asking why politician meat was so much more expensive than missionaries or soldiers, “Have you ever tried to clean one?”

      Seriously, you have a good point there. I’ll definitely have to do some research in that direction.

      Like

    3. I dream of things I later see often enough. Most times those are completely insignificant details, like something I may see on some television program a day or two later, or see on the street and notice well enough to pay attention to it – and that rarely is anything dramatic, it could be something like a woman wearing a jacket I like or a scary looking dog – once a guy who hit on me in the gym and I had a beer with (back when I still could drink beer) but never met after that, occasionally something I may read about in the newspapers later. It seems those things are also always something I see myself, personally, later so if I dream of something which will be in the news I don’t ‘see’ it as it happens, I ‘see’ what I am going to see in the news later.

      But since I have noticed that what I dream I often enough see in my waking life afterwards I definitely would pay attention if I dreamed something like being in a train wreck, I would probably drive for a while after that rather than take the train.

      Like

      1. Yes – I had many dreams about airline crashes my first year of the disease. I have not been on a plane since. It may have been the meds in this case, but I have had so many dreams that came true in varying degrees (sometimes exactly as the dream) that I listen. I tell anyone else it is because my immune system is depressed.

        Like

      2. The few instances I have had with seeing something later that I had dreamt about previously have been mostly silly things, but hard to shrug off (though still not enough to really change my mind). I don’t even remember them now, except for one I remember to this day:

        It was about 35 years ago, and I was still going to the YMCA Camp in the summer, with my father, who worked there (I didn’t go as a camper, they just allowed me to hang out with the campers while dad was at work). One day, a few of us were talking in the recreation center, and one of the campers made the claim that he had a lion as a pet. Well, OK, that is a kind of claim some insecure young kid might make to make himself sound big, but then we asked him what he fed it, and he told us, 2 boxes of cat food a day. Naturally, that was a ludicrous claim, but that was the same thing he had said in the dream, which I didn’t really remember until that moment. It hit me so hard, I got light-headed and couldn’t think, because even at 12, I knew how unlikely that was to match up with.

        The only alternative explanation I can come up with is that I had heard the same boy make the same claim the previous year and just didn’t remember it.

        Like

        1. That is the explanation then– you give mundane reasons for extraordinary events. ;-) It is a human thing about human control –controlling fear. If we believed half of what we see, we wouldn’t be able to function.

          Like

          1. Well, don’t forget that I used to be a believer. There are very few events which I have seen that were not OBVIOUSLY caused by something other than the paranormal, and people were deluding themselves (of course, I can’t specifically say that those who have claimed to see ghosts had an alternate explanation, it’s just that their words did not add up to a coherent whole). And when I say ‘very few’, I mean something like 5 events in my lifetime. Not enough to really support it, in my opinion.

            Like

        2. The things is that you may have injected what he said into the dream. Our memories are malleable, especially those of dreams which are an altered state of consciousness.

          Like

  14. I have this mental image of Kate playing the part of the weasely character from the first Mummy remake. When Imhotep corners him, he pulls out a key ring with religious charms and symbols from about 20 traditions and starts running through them until he hits one that works. Maybe you could wave a “Coexist” sticker and a vial of holy water while reciting St. Patrick’s Breastplate in Gaelic, followed by excerpts from the Diamond Sutra or Tibetan Book of the Dead.

    Like

            1. Ha! Four of Seven and that’s not even counting the rifle that is imported by Beretta although made in Pohjalainen’s home country.

              Like

  15. Holy symbols might not work if you don’t feel they have anything to them. Candles, oils, sage and tobacco smudging all sound good (try to find natural leaf tobacco, but that’s hard because some places have laws that restrict possession to only Amerinds — go figure.) Stones that deflect and ground out negative energies work well, and all you have to do is wear them. Check out the properties of the various stones, find those you would enjoy wearing, then go find stones of that type. Preferably several.

    They do have a load limit. I had a very nice little hematite pendant on my pentagram that shattered in the presence of a particularly nasty “slime person.” (Which brought up the part of me I converted to Wicca to control — not even slime people are stupid enough to hang around that. Old-school ‘Flies, yes, *that* one.) So have several stones or a few substantial ones to spread the load.

    @RES Your hypothesis of limited number of souls creating slime people doesn’t hold with my experience. Two friends of my group at NTTC Orlando went, literally overnight, from being typical friendly Odds to empty-feeling slime people, and others of us felt something trying to suck us away into a gray nothingness.

    Like

    1. Your two good friends were playing in the wrong sandbox. I have had that happened too. It was a couple of friends when I was in Japan. They just couldn’t keep their hands, minds, and bodies away from evil. They searched it out. My opinion is that the best defense in those occasions are really good running legs. After that a really good ambush has been helpful.

      Like

      1. This is a worry… I have the unclean attraction to the dark side myself. It’s something I keep strongly controlled, but I know the tendency is there.

        As Sarah’s said once or twice, I watch myself all the time.

        Like

            1. I have a talent that I can see the consequences of certain actions so even though the black is seductive, it horrifies me. (large pattern recognition, I think it is called?) I don’t see every consequence, of course, just the main ones. I never wanted to be that kind of person. Grumpy, yes. Evil, no.

              Like

              1. The problem with these things is how slippery they are. There seems to be something, you get results often enough that you can’t just dismiss any of it, but the actual rules are either very hard to figure out, or they keep changing. You can never say that if A, then B, it may happen once or ten times or even a thousand times, and then it’s suddenly first A, then M or even first N, then A. I believe enough to practice, and enough to be very careful, but I never count on any of it.

                Like

                1. I think it has to do with our life paths. I do believe that we pick a path for our learning– which implies that we lived before– I don’t know if I believe it or not, but it is comforting. :-) But if we try and force a consequence that is not in the possibility of our life path (or the point in the life path) the result is disabled. my opinion only– Also I don’t count on it at all either. I count on my gut feelings– the only time they led me wrong was when I was on a high dosage of chemo.

                  Like

      2. the writers who solemnly enjoin us that all characters, even the worst villains, really think what they are doing is good, have not quite grasped the depths of human capability.

        Like

    2. Dracona, this does not surprise me. When you metaphorically hang out the welcome mat to anything passing by, it’s not exactly shocking that something unfriendly would decide to take up residence as it were.

      It’s rather more awkward when you don’t believe in this stuff and find it wants to believe in you.

      Like

      1. Kate, I’m going to say something probably (well, almost certainly) offensive, but I have to. I’ve been a Protector type for over 50 years (I refuse to give my age, but since age 10), and I CAN’T keep silent here. The fact that you claim “to not believe,” and yet keep experiencing something, means you have a REAL PROBLEM ™. I’ve never met you in person, so I’m skirting rules of more than one role here.
        You need to (*very soon*) decide several things. 1) Why don’t you believe? 2) What is it you don’t believe in? You need to do this for two reasons. A) Whether you believe they really exist, or not, Demons (agents of evil) do exist both physically and spiritually. (I’ve seen and fought them.) B) Your refusal to accept their actual existence, makes you extremely vulnerable to them. (Whether you believe in germs and virii or not, they can and do make you sick.)
        Walking anywhere close to the Dark Side, cloaked in unbelief, is akin to walking through a really bad area, with money hanging from your clothes. It’s not IF you get attacked, it’s WHEN. Some belief traditions are better than others, but all offer at least some protection. There is far more evil walking, and just plain loose, in the world than there has been for a very long time.
        If you want to discuss, email me at g-r-a-f-x-m-a-n-u-s at yahoo dot com (remove the dashes), and I’ll go into more detail. We need good writers, and those who, knowing it or not, can see the evil, alive and well.

        Like

        1. I’ll definitely consider this – I need a bit of time to let the whole deal sink in, because frankly, I did not expect the responses I’m getting. I expected a lot more of “ookay… lets just back away from the crazy writer lady real slow now…”

          Plus it’s after 9pm my time and I need to go to work tomorrow.

          Like

      2. (Changed my user name. Don’t know why I didn’t sign up to begin with using this one, which I use everywhere else. First place I’ve seen where I *could* change my user name.)

        @ Kate & Cyn

        They weren’t on the wrong Path; we were all too ignorant. We’d gone out and had a circle in the woods — teens and tweens goofing around — and didn’t know proper procedures for proper protection. As Walter said, like walking around a bad neighborhood (ever heard the stuff about Florida?) with cash hanging out of our pockets.

        Like

        1. Well – yes– I have heard stories about that too (my parental units had experience as teens playing in the occult). My experience was with adults who should have known better, but thought they were smarter because they were more intelligent than the average person.

          And the metaphor is right… the problem is that some protections are actually not protections at all, but are ways to make you look more tasty. my opinion only

          Like

      3. Once, online, someone explained that demons were not a problem because she didn’t believe in them, but all those horrible fundamentalists are a bother — and I pointed that’s like a woman in habit of picking up men in bars assuring her friends that she thinks serial killers are a meme put about by patriarchy to intimidate women. It makes matters worse not better.

        Like

          1. You wouldn’t hear that from the missionaries I know. Like my former pastor, now administrator of a US charity supporting an orphanage in Africa. During our church’s annual visits to the orphanage, which they did in groups of about 8 to 12, he used to buy touristy trinkets to bring back as fundraisers. The last time he did that, he got ahold of some bad juju that kept the whole group awake with nightmares. They burned a bunch of their goods before they were rid of the tainted item. And they don’t fundraise that way anymore.

            Like

          2. I have heard a former missionary recount how one pagan priest complain that they can’t summon the spirits when they walk around with that white thing — which, he finally worked out, was their Corpus Christi procession.

            Like

    3. Multiple causes can exist. Stipulating that souls exist, is there anything extant which is not food for some other extant thing?

      Like

  16. You are writing stories that, while fictional, are nevertheless True. Moreover, the sort of people who would, upon reading stories corresponding to similar events and persons in their own lives, be tempted to exclaim “hey…how does she know me?”, are not only disproportionately likely to read them, but disproportionately likely to be hanging around in the sort of forum where such an exclamation will find its way back to you. Especially since the name on the cover of the books matches the name on your online presence. (Whether it matches the name on your drivers license is both unknown to me and utterly immaterial to the question at hand. The point being, folks who read the books without already knowing you, who subsequently google “Kate Paulk” are going to pretty reliably find you, and thus will have easy means to tell you about correspondences between your stories and theirs.)

    Besides…did I ever tell y’all about the time Al-qaeda stole my big twist, and then in response, USG stole almost everything else in my plot that wasn’t directly and personally driven by my protagonist’s own actions?

    I’m told it happens all the time.

    Like

    1. You know, that’s almost comforting, although you’d have to be pretty peeved about losing that big plot line.

      Like

  17. Well, in my dim and distant past in Africa, I ended up as a third-degree initiate into the mysteries of the Zulu sangomas. They had some interesting ideas about witchcraft and what to do with (and about) it. Most of them were fairly lethal, which tends to limit their practicality in the USA – but I’ve been told you have a quaint custom known as the “Three S’s” that might help with that . . .

    Like

    2. In real life, as opposed to New-Age-influenced community-based reality, belief in malefic magic is found in every culture except some hunters-and-gatherers, and in modern industrialized nations. (Really modern. One murder committed in late 19th century France was on the grounds that the man had bewitched the murderers’ cow.)

      And a lot of them have witch hunts over it.

      Like

      1. IMO part of the belief in “malefic magic” comes from the idea that “bad things don’t *just* happen”. IE somebody has to be at fault.

        Now days, it’s the “evil corporation”, “evil conspiracy” etc not evil witches.

        Like

        1. True – even when I knew that my disease was caused by no fault of my own (what the doctor said), I still looked for a cause– I may have found one, but I can never be sure. Probably organic chemicals used for cleaning electronics while I was in the Navy. So it really burst my bubble that I couldn’t blame someone or something– so yea, I blame “evil” chemicals. ;-) What I am saying is that I agree…. partly.

          Like

          1. My wife obsessed for a while over what ’caused’ her breast cancer. She may still, and just not be telling me, but I tried pretty hard to at least get her to understand that there was no way to tell.

            Like

            1. I did too– (still do) but during my first year when chemo was also causing side-effects, I had this hallucination that I was a detective and my job was to find out what cause this horrible thing to happen to me. So yea– I think it is a normal feeling–

              Like

  18. I frequently dream futures. It runs in the family–both my side, from dad (we blame the gypsy blood, but he’s mostly Finnish) and my husband’s (who to the best of our knowledge has no ethnicity in common with me). At least one child has inherited the ability to our knowledge. Not THE future, just possible futures.
    Other than that, supernatural entities stay clear of me. Kate, if I ever get to a con, I’ll hang out with you and any nasty entities will leave you alone. (Haunted dorm, haunted music practice hall, went on a ghost tour this Hallowe’en; never a hint of anything when I’m in the room.) You may remember me as a particularly clueless young writer going by ‘Sunny’ on the old Baen email writers yahoo group.

    Like

  19. Oh, and I got ConVent last night and laughed so hard I cried. If it’s that good for someone who’s never made it to a con, it must be better for those who have. (We were going to go to WorldCon in Denver. We had #4 son instead.)

    Like

  20. Water has a spirit. It can purify, heal and protect you. You absorb it into you when you bathe or drink. Talk to the water, ask it to protect you and keep you safe.

    You can do a ritual if it helps you but I just clear my mind and talk to the water when I’m in the shower. Make sure to say thank you. :)

    I’m from the Interior Salish people if your wondering.

    Like

  21. Just for the record, we Catholics would say that holy water, blessed salt, blessed Miraculous Medals, Rosaries, scapulars, and other sacramentals are not belief-dependent. They’ve been blessed by God, by way of a priest, etc., and that’s the basic thing. So it’s a fairly common thing for Catholics to give sacramentals to friends and family who are non-Catholics, atheists, etc. to keep them safe. (And of course to help convert them! But it’s easier to convert folks if they’re alive and well!)

    So just don’t do anything sacrilegious with it, and you’re welcome to all the holy water in every font in church, Kate. (A lot of Catholic churches have a little storage cask thing with a tap on it, for you to fill up holy water bottles from, also.) And honestly, I’ve heard of people doing some fairly goofy things with holy water that worked out okay. (Cooking with tiny quantities of holy water and/or blessed salt is surprisingly common in some quarters of the Catholic world, for example. And hey, it can’t do any harm.)

    Anyway… it’s traditional for poets and various other forms of artists to have moments of strong intuitive insight into people, or to spot patterns and talk about them without being able to understand how you spotted them or why the patterns exist. Just because that’s not regarded as normal in the modern world doesn’t mean it’s not still true. Like other kinds of human instinct, it’s useful and needed, so be glad you have it and don’t worry about it. “Knowledge at the finger’s ends” is a lot less creepy than Mr. Lizard Brain or Mr. Berzerker, anyway. :)

    Like

    2. * Obviously holy things will provide more graces to people who are “properly disposed” to accept the graces given, and that would include belief. But non-believers who are acting properly according to their best knowledge are pretty much “properly disposed” to the best of their ability, and God will know their hearts and help them.

      Like

    3. I am reminded of a (IIRC) Frederick Brown story from Unknown, about a boy who had filled his squirt gun from the Holy Water font and thereby saved the world.

      Like

Comments are closed.