"We hope that, when insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics." -- Bill Vaughn

That's not happening in the bugmageddon novel. Those insects have no gratitute. Here's an excerpt from the first draft of Bugs in the System:

--Doot fired the Browning into the mass of wasps ahead. The big slugs tore through multiple insects, and bugs dropped from the sky like rain trailing streams of hemolymph and internal organs. The pickup wheels crushed the chitinous carcasses as Jones shifted gears, speeding forward beneath the black and yellow attack. Jessie dropped to a knee in the truck bed to fire straight up into the swarm. Two wounded wasps fell into the back of the Power Wagon and stung each other to death in their final seconds of insectoid fury.--

About that Power Wagon: It is in fact modeled on the one I used to own. It was old when I got it, and even older when I had to give it up. I may provide a picture sometime if there's any interest.

I know I said I would be finished with the bugmageddon novel by now, but I continue to discover that I'm not done. I've been on the last 5K words for about 15K words now. However, I'm on the last two chapters, so it will have to end soon.

I plan to do a short story or two before tackling Book 7 in T&DF. You can get the first two books in the series for only 99 cents each. Start with Threading the Rude Eye. Short descriptions and links to all my books are here.

I'm reading The Escape from Elba, The Fall and Flight of Napoleon 1814-1815 by Norman MacKenzie. I'm enjoying it. I'm still reading Crusaders by Dan Jones, which I'm enjoying, but my short attention span saw the Elba book and I knew I couldn't resist getting right to it, even if I had to set aside Crusaders for a bit. I've also got this series idea (for which I've already written the opening short story) about the Napoleonic Wars and the evil menace that forces Bonaparte to go to war in order to stamp it out before it destroys Europe.

I'm still looking for endings for the conversation bubble in the comic picture below. Submit your best ending.

"Can't today. I'm busy________________.

Keep it classy. The winner may select one of my 99 cent ebooks on Amazon, one of my westerns, or an ebook copy of my bugmageddon novel, Bugs in The System, when I upload it to Amazon. I'll email him or her a link/coupon to get the selected prize.

In the music appreciation category, my eldest daughter did not appreciate Johnny Cash's "Understand Your Man." She was merely apathetic to "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors.

Would you do anything for magic? Explore that question with Luna Fox's Cave of Time, which you can download for free.

Your Free Fantasy Reads for June are right here.

Jump into Summer with this beach load of Amazing Summer Reads in a variety of genres.

"Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: wait and hope." --Alexandre Dumas --The Count of Monte Cristo

Keep reading, my friends