Become a Patron

[Note: I just moved this article from www.chaoticterrinpress.blogspot.com this morning.  The original posting was on 7/10/17.]

This below is what I posted on Patreon yesterday.  The idea is to invite a friendly audience of vehicular passersby to support us and my writing.

    You may have seen me “protesting” in front of Planned Parenthood’s abortion site on McDowell Street in Asheville, North Carolina. Maybe you gave a friendly honk and a thumbs up. (Thanks!)  Or maybe you flipped us the bird and shouted a degrading insult or obscenity. Or maybe you saw an advertisement somewhere for Chaotic Terrain Press. Whoever you are and however you got here, Welcome!

    My friends call me Mick and everyone else knows me as Meredith Eugene Hunt.

    The word “protest” doesn’t really capture what we are trying to do out there. Our signs that say “Let Your Baby Live, We Will Help” express the essence of our intention. Because we are in a public place, there is an element of protest, but that’s not at the heart of what we do. Our first audience is people who come for abortion. 

In nearly 30 years of anti-abortion work I’ve gone through a number of stages, including a decade of informally debating the subject of abortion on university campuses all over the southeast U.S. and elsewhere. At some point I got tired of debate. I won’t go into the why of it right now, except to say that debate has its limits because people erect barriers to reason. Everyone does. Logic breaks down into determined fallacy or else it’s built on weak, immutable presuppositions. Then there’s simply raw emotion. This is part of why I started writing stories in year 2000.

    I’ve published a three-part novel titled Universal Man (Graceful Runner, The Chinook Assembly and Then, a Soldier) and also I’ve published 26 short stories in a collection titled When Earth Whispers & Other Mostly Speculative Tales. I’ve written on my Chaotic Terrain Press blog what these stories and the novel are about. Abortion is a factor in several of them. The connection may seem to be obscure, but only when viewed on the surface. Look deeper. Think of the implications of, for example, physics running backward for your husband or wife and then read “Ships Passing in the Night: Romance and Marriage Between Lovers from Anti-synchronous Worlds” that I wrote for the Mad Scientist Journal. 

    You can read all 26 stories totally for free on my blog. Patreon is a way you can support my writing work. Or you can buy the books. And I need reviews: Good, bad, and even ugly. If the second and third option, expect a rebuttal, maybe. Or another story. Or silence. (Or a revision.) If you appreciate one of the short stories, try a long story—the novel. You can buy an electronic version cheap to read on your computer. I’ve taken almost all the photographs in the novel and those that accompany the short stories. The e-versions have the pictures in color.

    We endure a lot of verbal abuse on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. It’s a fish bowl out there. We have a narrow sidewalk, dangerous, noisy traffic, and hostility on all sides. But, we have passersby who are friends, too. Once in a while someone will stop and give us a little cash money, and when that happened yesterday (7/7/2017), I thought maybe others would support us if it were easier and convenient. Hence, here we are on Patreon. The stories help you get to know me and us better. They are what I have to say. I hope they’re fun. They might lead you to think in a new way. They might even, perhaps, lead you to join us to a degree you haven’t before now.

    I’ve put together a plan for monthly Patreon patrons to receive various free books, and I’ll also post some special things here, like working chapters of a novel in progress. Or sketches from unfinished short stories. Or my frog fishing story from junior high. (About shipping books internationally, I can only do this when Amazon permits.)

    Patreon suggests accompanying this text with a video introduction. I have posted such a two minute video HERE, but it’s not what you might expect. Like everyone else, I want to think about what’s beautiful or just entertaining. Maybe after 30 years of thinking about death, blood, and baby body parts, I’m more escapist than most people. Check out my other videos on my YouTube channel, UniversalDirt, especially the monarch butterfly ones. There’s a connection to abortion there, too. But I’ll leave you to work it out for yourself.

Happy traveling!*

    (P.S. If you feel like arguing with me, first read the two pro-life apologetics books by Francis J. Beckwith, then perhaps we’ll talk. If you’re thinking of attacking me, then read a couple stories first. Try “Attack of the Gravid Amazons.” It’s thought provoking. Remember, anyone can read the short stories for free at the Chaotic Terrain Press blog.)

*A reference to my ascending "reward" tiers Friendly Passerby, Kindred Spirit, Fellow Traveler, Trail Runner, Through Hiker, Wilderness Trekker, and Himalayan Climber.
  

To become a patron, go HERE.  Thanks!