Greetings from the wilds of Montana!

Before we start, have some free Sci Fi and Fantasy books.

I don’t usually talk about my personal life, but I heard people enjoy reading that from their authors. Who is the person behind all these books? I would say I’m fairly average, good at some things and not at others. I’m very good at thinking, abstract reasoning, and all the skills needed for a writer, but I’m not good at sports.

In fact, I suck so bad at sports, I tried to avoid them much in early life. During soccer, I was the last kid picked. Younger brothers were picked over me, and we are talking the kids who are just good at being a target. I wasn’t even good at that. I had asked my parents to quit soccer so I could have piano lessons.

The bullying and bad memories during PE growing up in the 80s affected my adult life in that I don’t even watch sports. When I was in college, I’d watch horror movies in my room while my roommates watched football (one girl who was over grilled me in the kitchen about it because she couldn’t understand why I don’t watch football). Every single year, my wife and I have the same conversation at Costco.

Me: Why is it so busy? There are so many people.

Wife: It’s the super bowl.

Me: Is that happening this weekend?

Or my favorite was when we happened to buy a grill on Super Bowl Sunday:

Random Stranger in Costco Parking lot: A Traeger! I know who’s house I’m going to!

Me (after the stranger was out of earshot): That was so weird. Why would she come to our house? Did she just make a joke about stealing our grill?

Wife: It’s the super bowl.

Me: Is that happening this weekend?

My sucking at sports all comes from the fact that I have very little depth perception. Catching a ball is really challenging. My hand goes up too early or late, very rarely when it needs to. That depth perception thing also affects me while I’m driving, mostly when I’m turning. Because I have trouble seeing how fast objects are moving, it’s hard for me to judge if I have enough time to turn.

My wife refers to this as my hate of turning left (that would be right for all you UK folks). I’d much rather have a green arrow and have been honked at on more than one occasion for my caution while driving. I even had an asshole whip around me (nearly causing an accident) because it's hard for me to judge things like speed and distance, and I wait till I know I can turn.

The funny thing is that the same dysfunction that makes me bad at sports and an overly cautious driver, may also affect my ability to edit grammar. So, when I said all the skills needed for a writer, I may have been exaggerating. When I read, it takes me a long time to comprehend what’s on the page. As a result, I’m slow at reading, and not very good at catching mistakes.

I’m so slow at reading, I’d be lucky if I could get through maybe 10 books a year, and even that is lofty. When my wife and I first met, I had hundreds of dollars of store credit at a used bookstore in Albuquerque, and she spent it all in less than a year (at my request, I certainly wasn’t going to use it all).

How do reading troubles have anything to do with poor depth perception? I’m pretty sure there is a short circuit in my brain with the visual processing centers. The reason I know this is because that thing that makes words seem more like a puzzle when I’m reading them, it goes away when I listen to audiobooks.

I can burn through an audiobook in the amount of time it takes to listen to it. I use up so many audible credits that we buy the bundles in addition to a high level credit plan. With audiobooks, I can “read” at the same rate as my wife (she does about 100 books/year), so it was never a comprehension problem. 

There is just something about my visual processing that’s not wired quite correctly that makes me bad at sports, drive super cautiously sometimes to the annoyance of others, and read at snail’s pace. I thank whoever invented Text-to-Speech, I probably wouldn’t be a writer without it (all my editing is done with it, needless to say I’m worse at homonyms than any other form of mistake). 

One last story before I let you go. One of my friends growing up was the star football/basketball player of my high school. Despite going to high school in the 90s, I was the nerd that didn’t get beat up by jocks. Mainly because the supreme jock sometimes would stop me in the hall to ask a Magic the Gathering question.

Anyway, we’d play DnD on weekends (think the kids from Stranger Things), and one weekend my football/basketball playing friend said, “Aaron, you’ve shown me a lot of your world, but I want to show you my world.”

We went over to his house which was a sports temple. His dad was a former NFL player, so of course they had everything for every sport. My friend tried to teach me basketball. After a while he got frustrated and said, “Aaron, you are really bad at this.”

I shrugged and said. “We all got our talents.”

We went over to my house and played DnD.

A couple of updates: I’m finally opening a store where you can buy direct from me. I only have a few products while I test it out. One of them is the brand new release of The Robin Hood of Couches. The book was one of my best stand alone novels, a murder mystery in the near future. 

I also made some predictions in the book about the future of AI and subscription based services in addition to other ideas of what the next 50 years may look like. I also experimented with what a better world may look like that reinvents what it means to work. Especially knowing that AI may cause there to be less jobs than people to fill them.

So if you want to help me out, or you want less of the money you pay for my books to land in the hands of the tech moguls, then consider using my direct from author store. I also plan to do a bunch of discounts and bundled 3 books. You’ll get 66% off what’d you pay anywhere else if you get the bundle.

Which brings me to my last announcement, Time Burrito 5 is finished! You can read it right now if you buy it directly from me. It’s also up for pre-order in the usual spots. I also have the Complete Time Burrito series up for direct sale for $12. All 5 eBooks for just $12. So if you want a deal and want to support me directly, you can now.

Okay last last announcement. Office Maxi book 2 and Carnt book 4 are almost done. Carnt book 4, I hope to release this summer. And Office Maxi book 2 will be everywhere 1/1/26 but direct from me sooner. So stay tuned and thanks for being here.

A Steamer Duck is back for more mayhem. The Church of David acolyte comes with a dire warning. Even Clara 543k, who once tried to murder the universe, escapes her prison outside of time and space.

The entirety of existence is collapsing. Luckily, the multiverse has Clara, Pete, Unk, and Misako. Cut to awesome trailer cinematics:

Misako craters the ground when she lands with a cool pose. Clara runs through a bombed-out WWII city dressed as a nurse. Pete, covered in flour, struggles in the kitchen, near death. Unk, in disco whites, roller skates up to a mob boss.

Announcer: Time Burrito 5: The Fifth Book! Come on...are you serious? They already know it’s the fifth one!

Author: Just keep reading. It’ll be cool.

Announcer: Time Burrito 5: The Fifth Book! Coming to an eReader near you after you hit that purchase button.

Read Time Burrito 5 today!