Books are available on Amazon or from the authors. The launch will include a musical presentation of Fish Feet by Beck McGuigan. See you there!
Triple Book Launch March 21
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Bonfire of the Vanities–A Review of a Non-review for SOCS!
These are the nine “Vanity Press” books I’ve published in the past 17 years.
In response to the SOCS prompt of “Review,” I can’t help rerunning a blog I wrote 14 years ago, replicating a letter I received from an organization that shall go nameless that I had asked to review my book. Since I had just started blogging, it only received 3 views, but I think the message is as appropriate today as it was then. This is that blog entry:
Vanity Depressed
Today, I received the below email from a well-known organization that reviews children’s books:
Dear Judy Dykstra-Brown,
Thank you for your interest in XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Unfortunately, we can’t review books from vanity presses like CreateSpace*. For more of our submission guidelines, please see our website here: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
XXXXXXXXXX
Editorial Assistant
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
*note from Judy: CreateSpace was a company within Amazon that aided self-publishing authors in formatting,, printing and distributing their books. It is now called KDP.
My feelings about being labeled a “vanity press” author will be best expressed by displaying here the letter I wrote back to the assistant who had written the letter:
Dear XXXXXXXX,
I thank you for your prompt reply to my inquiry.
Although I certainly understand your reasons for not wanting to consider privately published material, I would like to bring one matter to your attention.
I have been writing for over 50 years. I have written and published three books, published nearly 40 articles in print and online magazines, won a national first prize for my poetry, edited a poetry journal and now coordinate a popular poetry series. I am in the process of having five more children’s books illustrated and working on a novel and two poetry anthologies. In my early career, I taught literature and writing for ten years and edited a teenage poetry anthology.
I mention these facts to explain why I feel it is an insult to have my decision to publish my own work called a “vanity”. Certainly, I am aware of the term, just as I am aware of other racial and physically derogatory terms that were once considered the norm but which in an enlightened age have come to be recognized as insulting and prejudicial.
May I ask your group to consider not using the term “vanity press” as a blanket term for self-published material?
I thank you for your efforts to reward excellent work in the field of children’s literature.
Best Regards,
Judy Dykstra-Brown
I would be most interested in other bloggers’ thoughts about this matter. Is blogging, also, considered just another “vanity” means of expression? I know that a great deal of status is attached to being published by a recognized publishing company, but do all writers who choose another path deserve to have their efforts considered as mere vanity? Is that our main goal? Is that what we deserve to be labelled as? Is it too much to ask to be labelled as what in truth we are—self-published?
Frida Kahlo had two gallery exhibitions in her entire lifetime. One of her paintings just sold for 5 million dollars!!! Were her artistic endeavors, in her lifetime, mere vanities? What of Van Gogh? Or Emily Dickinson? Only a few of Franz Kafka’s works were published during his lifetime. Johann Sebastian Bach was widely known as an organist, but his fame as a composer occurred after his death. Henry David Thoreau could not find a publisher for many of his works.
Certainly, I am no Emily Dickinson or Henry David Thoreau, and those who go through the rigors and humiliations of trying to find an agent and publisher certainly deserve plaudits for possessing determination as well as talent. I admit that I have neither the inclination nor the energy to jump through the hoops necessary to find a “legitimate” publisher. I just want to write, and I will not accept the label of “vanity” being attached to my writing.
Yes, I am proud of my efforts in doing all of the work myself that a publisher and editor normally do. Yes, I am proud of the fact that I have continued to write for 50 years with very little monetary recompense. But I don’t think my need to be heard is prompted by vanity any more than the determination of professionally published authors is. We write because we need to write. It is a drive and what, in my case, gives meaning to my life. If that is vanity, then long live vanity! But please say it behind my back—not as an official representative of your guild or company or association or library or agency or board of merit.
Now I will climb down off my soapbox and get back to work on what I do for love, not vanity. If I’ve struck a chord, please add your voice to my protest by publishing your comments on my blog.
The SOCS prompt today is “Review.” The image was created with the aid of DeeVid AI.
UN Panel Condemnation of Trump
BREAKING: Trump is dealt a massive political black eye as a top United Nations panel condemns him for his relentless hate speech and deeply cruel immigration policies.
The entire world is starting to stand up to this bully…
“The Committee was deeply disturbed by the growing use of derogatory and dehumanizing language, and the dissemination of negative and harmful stereotypes targeting migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers,” wrote the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a group of 18 independent experts.
They stated that hate speech from leaders like Trump, in tandem with his brutal immigrations crackdowns around places like schools and churches, has led to “grave human rights violations.” This has long been apparent to the American people, who have been forced to watch as masked federal thugs flood our streets, terrorizing and murdering people at will.
The panel further stated that leaders like Trump have pushed stereotypes about migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (which Trump regularly does to excite his racist MAGA base) by “portraying them as criminals or as a burden.” Such language, the panel concluded, leads to discrimination and even hate crimes.
They also specifically called out Trump’s ICE and Customs and Border Protection for implementing discriminatory policies like racial profiling and “random” identity checks to target people of color.
The panel further wrote that they are “deeply concerned” about the skyrocketing number of detainees imprisoned in detention facilities — pointing out that it spiked from 40,000 in 2024 to 73,000 in 2026.
The panel experts are also “alarmed by the death of detained refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants in migration detention facilities, particularly the deaths of at least 29 migrants in 2025 and six in January 2026.”
They urged the White House to begin complying with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
This is what Trump has done to America. The entire world can see that we’re being controlled by a deeply racist fascist regime. We commend them for speaking out and adding their voices to ours!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DcY2zDJpu/https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DcY2zDJpu/
Time Zones
This sign has appeared on so many sites that it is impossible to give attribution…but had to share it myself.
More Friday Fibs
For Fibbing Friday the 13th, some of the word clues were difficult, to say the least, so be patient and sound them out with me, please!!!! (Illustration done by AI)
1. What is a canopy? What you hand the lab assistant for your UTI test.
2. What is a cookie? How the chef gets into the restaurant kitchen.
3. What is a pup cup? A stinky chamber pot.
4. What is a typhoon? It is on a typed sheet of paper that requires correction.
5. Why are nails sharp at one end? To enable them to scratch itches.
6. What’s the difference between a chip and a fry? Both are beauty shop errors, but one is a faulty manicure and the other a faulty permanent.
7. What is a shoe horn? A trumpet that signals a retreat during a battle.
8. Why do spirit levels have bubbles? Because they are served with a carbonated mixer.
9. Why do we have tea leaves but coffee grains? Because that’s the color mom wanted the eaves painted and because the housepainters spilled some of the brown paint from the walls onto the wheat plants in the window boxes.
10. What is a diplomat? A judge at a diving competition.
Dakota Dirt for dVerse Poets
Dakota Dirt
Dakota Dirt
My father toiled for fifty years,
facing the worries and the fears—
the gambles that a farmer faced
when all his future he had placed
as seeds beneath Dakota dirt.
Every year, he risked the shirt
right off his back. With faith, he’d bury
his whole future in that prairie.
Sticky gumbo, that fine-grained silt
upon which his whole life was built.
Then, closer to our summer home,
near the river, in sand and loam,
he hoped he could prepare for ours:
our clothes, our college, and first cars.
Then came those years that brought the change
that altered fields and crops and range.
The rain that formerly turned to rust
plows left untended, turned to dust
that, caught up in the wind’s mad thrust
caused many a farmer to go bust
as a whole nation mourned and cussed
black clouds of dirt that broke the trust
that nature would provide for all.
What formerly fed, now brought their fall.
It broke the men who couldn’t wait
for the drought years to abate,
but my father kept his faith in soil.
Found other paying forms of toil
building dams to catch what rain
might later fall on that dry plain.
And though others thought his prospects poor,
he kept his land and bought some more.
He learned to vary furrow line,
believing it would turn out fine.
So when good fortune returned again,
bringing with it snow and rain,
he welcomed and was ready for it.
That April it began to pour, it
filled his dams and nourished what
soil remained. He filled each rut
with clover, alfalfa and wheat.
Allowed the summer sun to beat
and change them into fields of gold—
into grain and feed he sold.
Bought cattle. Planted winter wheat.
Once more secure on his two feet,
expanded and as he had planned,
bought more cattle and more land.
Some said that he had just exploited
those whose land he’d reconnoitered
and purchased after they’d given up,
empty hands transformed to cup.
He was a hero unsung, unknown,
until long after when I was grown.
At the centennial of our town,
I learned a bit of his renown
when others told to me how he
shared nature’s generosity.
He sent three daughters to university,
then shared with his community
to build a church and give more knowledge
to those young men he sent to college.
Then made loans without fame or thanks
to other farmers denied by banks.
I’d always known how rich my life
was made by all his toil and strife—
the insurance he gave his family
that enabled us all to be free.
But, aside from daughters, wife and mother,
I’d never know of every other
soul he’d helped to prosperous ends:
neighboring ranchers, sons of friends.
Could my father have known he’d also planned
all these other futures when he bought the land?
This rich Jones County gumbo on the treads of my tire at one of our all-town reunions a few years ago is what sent me to college!
For dVerse Poets “Embodying a Landscape” prompt.
Many Me’s
Many Me’s
If I should have to paint a picture of my present mood,
I’d be walking down a staircase, unfortunately nude—
My many selves preceding me and coming fast behind—
for there would be not one of me, but many of my kind.
This scene is a mere copy of Duchamp’s solution to
a person who perhaps has found she has too much to do.
My list of tasks is growing, though I’ve dealt with one or two;
but how I’ll deal with everything, I fear I have no clue.
And so I guess my canvas style would simply have to be
like Marcel’s (though not cubist, still with more than one of me.)
That way I’d send off each of me to do what must be done.
They’d do all my labor while I went to have some fun.
While self 1 wrote my daily prompt and self 2 cleaned my shelves,
I’d go out to the water park with all my other selves.
We’d climb up all the ladders and slide down all the slides
and play a game of tug-rope where I would be both sides!
We’d go out to the ice cream place and have a cone or three
and they’d get all the calories with none assigned to me!
We’d take my bad dogs for a walk and I would be so free.
Two other me’s would hold the leashes, not the actual me.
I’d loll here in my hot tub, swing in my hammock, too,
while selves from 1 to 9 would do all that I have to do.
They’d figure out my airfryer instructions (all in Spanish.)
They’d sort out all my photographs and clean my loo with Vanish.
Agreeable to every task, they’d never mention “can’t.”
They’ll pick off all the yellow leaves from every drying plant.
They’ll organize my studio that is a horrid mess.
(It’s been that way for many months—a fact I must confess.)
They’d sort out all my closets and organize my drawers,
then go into my Filofax and sort out all the bores.
They’d shape my canned goods into rows—sorted from “A” to “Z.”
which makes it difficult for them, but easier for me.
And though my other selves keep warm from their activity,
my idleness seems not to create any warmth for me.
So although I like my colors and my brush strokes strong and bold,
I wish I’d put some clothes on us, ‘cause I am getting cold!!
Esther’s Writing Prompt this week is: Mood. (Obviously, mine is a silly one.)
Time of Death? For Limerick Challenge
Time of Death?
There was a young woman from Hall
who died jumping over a wall.
T’would have been a sad thing
if she’d died in the spring,
but she didn’t. She died in the fall.
See other limericks for Esther’s March 9 “Laughing Along with a Limerick” challenge HERE. (Sorry, I didn’t realize there was a prompt word until after I’d written the limerick. Next time I’ll play by the rules, Esther!!!!
Bird Chorus, No Backup, for dVerse Poets
Bird Chorus, No Backup
Birds perch on countless branches, each a separate bell
ringing out the cadence of stories they must tell.
Around them, eerie silence, for no other sounds compete.
No sound of children’s laughter. No pattering of feet.
Compared to their iPhones, mere nature can’t compete.
The prompt for the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt is “bird.” A Quadrille asks for 44 words only…
The Numbers Game #115. Please Play Along. Mar 9, 2026
Gloria’s birthday.
Fossil turned to stone
A delighted new friend
But this one is good enough .
Behind the Frizbee
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 