Book Review: Generations by Noam Josephides

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My first book review as an Indie Story Geek judge.

In December, I applied to be a judge for the 2024 Indie Ink Awards managed by Indie Story Geek. I’d heard about the contest on Mastodon and thought, why not? I like to read. Maybe this would expose me to some new authors that I would not otherwise find on my own.

To be honest, my reading lately has been mostly a mix of non-fiction thought pieces like Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Filterworld by Kyle Chayka — both recommended if you think social media and addiction to our mobile devices might be a problem (spoiler alert: they are) — and, believe it or not, novels based in the Star Wars universe, primarily those that are part of the canon. (Yes, folks, there’s more to Star Wars than 11 movies and a handful of TV shows on Disney.) My fiction tastes run to science fiction and mystery, but I’ll also read some fantasy. I don’t like heavy, depressing books that make me sad. What I like to avoid is juvenile writing — either writing meant for kids or “young adults” or books written by authors who write like that.

The Judging Experience

I was very surprised to be selected as a judge. One of the reasons for the surprise was that when I filled out the application form, it asked me what my pronouns were. The pronoun thing doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it bothers crazed conservatives, but it is becoming tiresome. I think that field should be optional on any form. If it matters to you and it’s not the usual he/him for males and she/her for females, by all means, fill it in. But if I identify myself as female — another field on the form — I should be able to skip that question and let you assume I’m a she/her. But the field could not be skipped so I wrote “I’m a straight female and old school; figure it out.” I figured that my sarcasm would disqualify me but it did not. They’re either in the same camp I am about this topic or desperate for judges.

Interestingly, half of the judging categories are related to “Writing the Future We Need,” which relates directly to LGBT, disability, transgender, Asian author, Black author, or a variety of other topics that they want judges to be “qualified” to judge. This is easy for me — I wasn’t qualified for any of them, not having the kind of first hand experiences I think they were looking for. This actually makes sense when you consider their pronoun question. They want to be inclusive, which I think is great. But they also want the judges on these topics to actually have a clue about them. That’s also a good idea.

I was accepted and invited to join in on a Discord forum (or whatever). I signed up and joined in. That’s when I realized that at age 63, I was probably old enough to be the mother or grandmother of most of the other participants in the judging process. Animated emojis are a big thing among my fellow judges. I’m sure their social media feeds are plastered with selfies and memes that include poetry and flowers.

(Do I sound cynical? I hope so. That’s my intent here.)

Anyway, once I got set up with the Judge’s Portal on the Indie Story Geek website, I was able to get to business. The process is pretty simple. You “reserve” a book to judge — you need to read and judge at least 3 over over the next four or five months — and then download it as an EPUB, PDF, or (if available) audiobook. I chose Generations: A Science Fiction Mystery Thriller, which has the following blurb:

WINNER: 1st Prize – 2024 BookFest Award • WINNER: Global Book Awards – Silver Medal • “An epic science fiction noir!” – Publisher Weekly’s BookLife • “Extraordinary… dense and enthralling journey” – Kirkus Review • “An amazing space story of mystery, adventure, and exploration. It’s smart, funny, but above all, endearing” – Reader Views

Are Humanity’s leaders steering them into a trap? And can one woman stand up to power and uncover the conspiracy that had been brewing for generations?

The THETIS is humanity’s last hope: a generation-ship carrying the last remnants of Earth to resettle on a new planet.

But, under the facade of a tolerant and cooperative society built across two centuries of space travel, a deeply-buried secret lies – a secret that puts humanity’s new beginning at risk.

The key to uncovering that conspiracy lies in the hands of SANDRINE LIET, an Archivist introvert who has everything to lose by pitting herself against the most powerful people on the Thetis.

The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes that there is only one way to save both herself and the rest of her fellow Thetans – and it’s the most horrible choice imaginable…

GENERATIONS is a heart-pounding space mystery, an instant #1 Amazon Science Fiction Bestseller of 2024.

I downloaded the EPUB and imported it into the Books app on my iPad. (I’ve been trying to stay away from Amazon and Kindle these days.) And I started to read.

My Thoughts on Generations

First of all, I was not pulled into the book as I hoped I would be. It wasn’t a real page turner — at least not in the beginning. The writing was good, the characterization was good enough, but the plot was a bit slow to take off. The author hinted at backstories for characters here and there and, over time, revealed missing information. Maybe that was supposed to make me want to keep turning pages and learning more? It didn’t. I assumed that important information would be revealed as the book progressed and I wasn’t disappointed.

What the book excelled at was world building. This is so important for science fiction (and fantasy). The author had obviously thought out the world he was writing about in great detail, inventing a spaceship where generations of people would live for a two hundred year journey after the demise of Earth. The description of the ship, Thetis, wasn’t all laid out in a long descriptive passage. Instead, it was revealed little by little, just like the characters’ backstories. And it was believable.

Unfortunately, the plot wandered into a plot device I absolutely detest: protagonist’s name is smeared by people more powerful than her and she’s set up to take the fall for things she didn’t do. Fortunately, this wasn’t the whole book, but was enough of it that I had no trouble putting the book down to do other things.

To make matters worse, an early plot development revealed (at least to me) part of the book’s conclusion. Not only was the “mystery” not much of a mystery to me, but I was frustrated that the protagonist didn’t see what I did. This only got worse when my suspicions turned out to be correct. No, I didn’t solve the entire mystery right at the beginning — that would be impossible since a key piece was not made known until nearly the end. But I knew exactly which way the plot was heading.

But I think the thing that bothered me most was how the protagonist escapes from danger near the end of the book. It was completely unbelievable. I don’t want to spoil the book for readers, but the chances of her succeeding at a certain point were pretty much nil and yet she succeeds. I really wish the author would have gotten her out of that jam in a more believable way.

In re-reading this, it sounds like I hated the book. I didn’t. As I mentioned, the writing was good and the characterization was good enough. The mystery was interesting, despite me seeing the answer coming before it arrived. It wasn’t trite or clichéd. It wasn’t written for children. But the best thing it had going for it was the world-building. When it was over, I was left wishing I could stay on board for when Thetis arrived at its destination and Generation 10 could start developing their new world.

Maybe the author will take all the work he did on building Thetis to take us there? I would read that.

My Growing Dissatisfaction with Social Media

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I start to think long and hard about my involvement in social media and whether it’s worth the time I spend on it. Maybe you should, too.

Back in the mid 2000s, I was at the height of my writing career. Churning out at least five books a year with two of them guaranteed bestsellers — well, “bestsellers” by tech book standards, anyway; I wasn’t arguing with my royalty checks — I was on the leading edge of so much end user level stuff. It seemed natural that I should dive into social media, which was so new at the time. I may have had an account on MySpace, but it was Twitter, which I joined in 2007, that really attracted me.

Twitter

Back then, it was possible to view the entire system timeline just by going to Twittr.com. (Yes, in the very early days, there was no E. That was a popular naming trend back then. Drop the E in front of the R. Tumblr is another example.) You’d just go to that home page, read the tweets of people all over the world, and pick out the accounts you wanted to follow. I still follow the first person I followed on Twitter — although I follow him on Mastodon now. (More on that in a moment.)

Twitter became an important part of my lifestyle. It was my “office watercooler,” so to speak. I worked alone at a home office, working long, 12-hour days while on a book project and then taking time off to recharge before the next one. My future wasband either worked from his home office or back on the East Coast or, later, from an office down in the Phoenix area. (In the end, it got to be a sort of “job of the month club” for him, bouncing from one job to another. At the very end, it was hard to keep track.) Since my work was mostly solitary, each time I came up from a highly focused writing session for a brief rest before diving back in, I looked for someone to talk to. If my future wasband was busy or not around, I turned to my Twitter friends.

I started to build real-life friendships with some of these people. I met a surprising number of them in person. In those days, I was still traveling a bit for work and would make a point of meeting up with ones who lived at my work destination. Coffee. Lunch. Whatever. These people were folks I could chat with online during the day, cutting a bit of the loneliness out of my workday. We chatted about all kinds of things, from the weather and photography to travel and cooking. Just about anything. (That’s one of the benefits of being a polymath: you can find something to talk about with almost anyone.)

Also, pretty early on, when I was still producing video content for Lynda.com (not LinkedIn Learning), I wrote the very first video courses — or training material at all — about using Twitter. I think I revised that course two times before they pulled it away from me and handed it to in-house authors they didn’t have to pay royalties to. (And that wasn’t the only successful course they snatched away from me to bring in-house. They also took my WordPress course, which was a real money-maker for me for several years. I guess you can see why I won’t develop courses for them anymore.)

Facebook

I also hopped onto Facebook around the same time, although my use of that service didn’t pick up until around 2010. I didn’t like it quite as much. It seemed juvenile. People posting sometimes idiotic, sometimes misleading memes created by others. There are only so many cat pictures a person can look at in a day. Not many original thoughts being shared. Actually, not much of anything that could be considered a “thought.” It also upset me to learn that several real-world friends and family members appeared to have Nazi leanings. Do I really need to know that? Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

And then there was the time my sister, a life-long Republican, posted a pro-Democrat sentiment on her Facebook wall. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, had the nerve to lecture my sister, right there on Facebook for everyone to see. My sister deleted my mother’s comment and stopped talking to her for a while. I just blocked my mother. Who needs to worry about shit like that?

LinkedIn

I might have hopped on LinkedIn before Facebook. In the beginning, LinkedIn looked like a serious social networking website where I might actually make connections to people who could move my careers forward. (Yes, back then I had two active careers: writing and flying helicopters.) But I never had any success making solid professional contacts there and couldn’t see any reason to duplicate personal content I was already sharing on other social media. And then the spam began; it got to the point that every time I connected to LinkedIn, the only new content directed to me was spam from people claiming to know someone I barely knew or had heard of, trying to sell me on their services.

In fact, sometime between 2010 and 2014, I started to realize that actively participating in three social media sites — Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn — was taking a lot of time and effort. More than I wanted to give. LinkedIn was mostly abandoned; I killed the account completely when the spam started arriving in my email inbox and I couldn’t seem to shut it off.

Instagram, TikTok, others

Fortunately, I never got sucked into Instagram, like so many other folks have, although I think I did set up at least once account. Again, I felt my hands were already full with the social media I “had” to be on. I did not want to lose more hours of my day building a presence somewhere else.

Ditto for TikTok — most of the content I’ve seen there is amateurish, juvenile, or both. I think TikTok is the perfect platform for today’s vapid population of low attention span, gullible people. I do believe China is (or will be) using it to sway popular opinion. It won’t surprise me at all if it works. Anyone willing to waste hours of their day on the kind of crap the algorithm serves them — no matter how “good” that algorithm is at predicting what people like — is already being led around by a leash.

Social Media and the Publishing World

Anyway, my publishers were thrilled that I had a social media presence. That presence was enhanced quite a bit when I earned a “verified” checkmark on my Twitter account. (Back in the day, verified meant that they’d checked your identity and you were who they said you were. Twitter only performed this service for people with a certain level of fame, which I’d achieved at the time through my writing. Heck, for a while I even had a Wikipedia page.)

Keep in mind, this is still before the word influencer began being used. Authors at my level weren’t influencers yet — and I don’t think I ever was one. But readers — potential and otherwise — could find us online and be “friends” with us. We could post about our work and people who followed us could learn about it. All without costing the publishers a single cent of their advertising budgets. All the work fell to the authors and it sometimes was quite a bit of work.

And this is how things remain today in the publishing world. Part of the author evaluation process is an examination of the author’s social media reach and content. It’s crazy because it forces authors to build an online presence that takes them away from their actual work. It also limits what an author can say on social media — one unpopular tweet can land an author in seriously hot water. (And I’m sure I could find at least six good examples of this, but since I’m writing this in the middle of the California desert with no cell signal, I can’t look now.)

2015 to 2022

Let’s fast-forward to the mid 2010s. By this point, I was pretty much addicted to participation in social media, including Twitter and Facebook. (I’d mostly given up on LinkedIn by then.)

My writing career had wound down — who buys computer how-to books these days? — and my flying career had taken off (no pun intended). I was happily divorced, living in a home I had built to my specifications on 10 acres of view property in Washington state. I was exploring new hobbies like beekeeping and, later, silversmithing. I had a great garden. I had a little jet boat I’d take out on the Columbia River. I had real-life friends who lived nearby in addition to my social media friends.

The need to keep my publishers happy by maintaining a social media presence had pretty much faded away. But still, I was spending hours every day with my nose in my phone or iPad, scrolling through Twitter and Facebook, clicking Like buttons and Retweet buttons and replying to posts I had something to say about.

It was around then that I started to realize that Facebook wasn’t showing me all of the posts by all of the people I followed. It was showing me a selection of them. If I went to the person’s wall — do they still call it that? — I would see what they’d posted, but I had no patience to do that for everyone I wanted to keep up with.

The posts that seemed to come up the most were political memes. Holy crap! How many hateful, usually misleading memes are out there? Are people so freaking stupid that they can’t comprehend a thought unless it’s 25 words or less in big type on a picture?

And then there were the ads. They never seemed to stop. But when they started showing me ads related to things I’d searched for on Google, I completely wigged out. Facebook was tracking my activity across the Internet and using that info to display advertisements for things it thought I might like. This had to stop.

In the meantime, Twitter grew exponentially and became the platform of choice for the news media to quote. Not a day went by when a television newscast didn’t include at least one tweet.

Understanding the Algorithm

Filterworld Book Cover

If you’re curious about how the algorithm used by social media companies affects what you see and how you feel about it, you really ought to check out Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka. This book takes an extremely detailed look at how algorithms are used to addict us to social media and then manipulate us when we’re there. It’s full of real-life stories as examples.

I “read” it in audiobook format on a long drive and was really struck by a lot of things it covered, mostly because I’ve already seen examples in my own life and social media use. It has made me glad I’ve gotten off of algorithm-based social media platforms but has also made me think hard about the time I spend online.

And then I noticed that tweets weren’t appearing in the reverse chronological order I loved. And that tweets were missing. Twitter, like Facebook, was employing an algorithm that determined what it would show me and what order that content would appear in. Among ads. I found myself repeatedly going into settings to revert back to the chronological timeline of all the tweets by people I followed.

In the perfectly coined word by Cory Doctorow, social media — all social media — was becoming enshittified. After getting us addicted to their platforms, they were adding crappy “features” no one wanted to display advertising, change opinions, and collect information about us that they could sell to third parties. You know what they say: nothing is free. If you’re using a free service, maybe you’re the product they’re selling to someone else.

I knew what was going on and I didn’t want to be part of it. Something had to give.

After staying off Facebook for a whole year, I decided to delete my account. The hardest part about it was not losing touch with the few real friends I had there. It was knowing that the hours I’d spent participating on the service, giving them content that they might or might not show to the people who followed me, was time ultimately wasted. All that content would be deleted. Gone for good. (At least I hope so.)

I was down to just one social media account: Twitter.

2022 and Beyond

My love affair — fueled, in part by addiction — for Twitter soured considerably when the Space Karen, Elon Musk, bought it. It didn’t take long for him to try to monetize it by allowing people to pay for a “verified” check mark and trying to force those of us who already had one to pay up to keep it. I elected not to pay and found myself suddenly unverified. I was no longer who I said I was?

Me on Mastodon
My current profile on Mastodon.

I saw the way things were going — although I admit I never expected it to get as bad as it did. I set up an account on Mastodon, an open source platform that networks servers around the world, very much like the old Fidonet network my BBS was part of in the mid 1990s. Over time, I weaned myself off of Twitter and onto Mastodon. I fully expected it to meet my “watercooler” needs, bringing me a handful of friends I could chat with online no matter where I was.

Mastodon reminded me of Twitter when I first joined. No algorithm. Posts appear in reverse chronological order. I see every toot by everyone I follow — unless, of course, I blocked certain words or phrases with filters. I currently use filters extensively on Mastodon to block out as much political content as possible. I don’t need to follow politics on social media, where memes and desperate pleas attached to article links fill our minds with so much oversimplified crap.

When I learned my Twitter content was being used to feed AI systems, I wanted my 150,000+ tweets off Twitter. I paid TweetDeleter to do the job for me. Due to constraints on the Twitter platform, it took two months.

I set up Mastodon to automatically delete toots after a year. I had realized that nothing I shared online was so important that it needed to be kept forever. Life is fleeting, social media life is even more fleeting.

And this is where I am now:

  • I still have my Twitter account. I have to hold onto the user name so no one else gets it and tries to impersonate me. (Yes, it has happened before.) But I rarely look at it and, if you looked at it now, it would tell you to find me on Mastodon.
  • I participate throughout the day every day on Mastodon. Am I addicted? Sadly, I believe so.

My Current State of Dissatisfaction

And that brings me to the point of this post.

You see, even though I believe that Mastodon is my best option for participating in social media — keeping in mind that my solitary lifestyle gives me a need for the always attended “watercooler” for chatting with others — I’m finding myself less and less satisfied with it. Simply said, I don’t think it’s meeting my real need, which is thoughtful or amusing conversation.

If I wanted a distraction, I’d look at YouTube or do a crossword puzzle. Or, for Pete’s sake, work on one of my hobbies. (Did I mention that I recently started linocut and bookbinding? It never ends.)

But it’s not just distraction I want. I want meaningful conversation with intelligent people who don’t get bent out of shape if you don’t fully agree with everything they toot. People who aren’t sucked into current events so deeply that all they can do is whine about the current political landscape and share idiotic memes. People who can share a joke or provide insight about something I mentioned or share their own interesting experiences. People who aren’t so focused on the illusion of being a better human that all they can do is toot about the latest catastrophe or outrage that should make us sad or angry or frustrated and boost the toots of every out-of-luck user begging for money. People who don’t hate.

Am I getting that on Mastodon? Yes, to a certain extent. I fine-tune the accounts I follow daily, cutting out the ones who toot things I don’t want to see and turning off boosts for the ones who share everything they like, regardless of its more universal appeal. (The theory these people cling to is that they’re doing the original posters a favor by sharing instead of liking since there’s no algorithm to give them exposure. What they don’t realize is that they become one of thousands of algorithms, and that by sharing nearly everything, they’re filling our feeds with too much stuff.

I can count on two hands the accounts I interact with — keeping in mind that the only thing I want from social media is interaction. The rest is a steady stream of photographs that may or may not have been taken by the person who originally posted it. (I recently blocked the Pixelfed instance and that really cut back on the flood of photos. Enough remain.) And don’t get me started on the holier-than-thou mavens who find it necessary to tell us all how to toot and include alt text and use hashtags. I tell people how to mute and block people like that. ;-)

In general, however, social media is not serving me what I want to be served. It’s not filling the socialization gap in my life that’s inherent with living or traveling alone in a relatively remote area. And that’s got me wondering why I waste so much time on it.

The Solution

The solution is easy:

  • Cut back on social media use. I’ve tried before but will try again to limit my access to social media to 7 PM to 7 AM. In other words, no scrolling during the day. I’m also going to try to limit all access to less than one hour a day.
  • Continue to fine-tune the list of people I follow to dump the ones who share stuff I don’t care about and don’t interact with me and replace them with more interesting people. (I’ve been doing that a lot lately.)
  • Turn off boosts (like a retweet or share) for the people who share a lot of crap I don’t want to see.
  • Continue to fine-tune my filters to block out content I don’t want to see. These days, it’s pretty much anything to do with politics, war, gender and race issues, gaming, and programming. I figure that I already see just a fraction of what the people I follow post because of my extensive filtering. That’s fine with me.

While I don’t think any of these things will make my participation in social media more satisfying, I do believe that it’ll help break my addiction (because of less access) and help keep it from getting any more disappointing than it actually is.

The next step, of course, is dropping out of this last social media platform and staying off social media completely. But I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

In the meantime, what do you think about your participation in social media? Is it giving you everything you want to need? Are you satisfied? Do you feel as if you’re using your social media time productively or wasting it?

Campground Grief

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I have the worst campground stay ever, mostly because of the campground manager’s psychotic wife.

I’m snowbirding again, traveling in Arizona with my truck camper, which I hope to sell. I’d planned to come down here on a much shorter trip in my little Honda S2000. As the weather at home got gloomier and gloomier, I decided to load up the camper and head out early, spending more time with friends and enjoying the desert. My house-sitter was thrilled to be able to check in early; he’s a skier and loves spending winters at my house.

This has been a rocky journey. The first hurdle was serious truck troubles in Kingman, AZ that took time and money to resolve. Fortunately, I had both, although I’d prefer to spend them on other things. Then I had some camper battery issues near Tucson. More money, not much time, got the batteries replaced.

But, in general, the trip has been great so far. I visited a bunch of friends, saw some property for a potential relocation next year, and have been buying the cabochons I need to make jewelry — something I hope to get back to as soon as I return home.

Quartzsite is my current stop and I booked three nights at what I thought was Rice Ranch at the corner of Keuhn and Rte 95, very close to Tyson Wells where my friend Janet has a booth selling her artwork. I’d stayed there before and it was extremely convenient for me, as well as being far enough off the freeway that it was pretty quiet at night.

And that’s where my Quartzsite visit went south.

My Mistake: Booking at Rice Ranch North

You see, it turns out that I didn’t book at Rice Ranch. I booked at Rice Ranch North, which is east of Rice Ranch and completely unaffiliated. So when I turned up at Rice Ranch in the dark after driving 4 1/2 hours from Phoenix in too much traffic — rush hour there, construction near Quartzsite — I couldn’t find the entrance.

I called the number for the place and left a message. A woman called right back and directed me to their place, which I’d driven right past. It was crazy dark and, when I found my way in, she directed me with a flashlight to back into a spot.

I was angry and flustered about being somewhere I didn’t expect to be — somewhere that wasn’t walking distance from Tyson Wells in the dark or with bags of purchases and dogs on leashes. When I mentioned that I might nose in, the woman said I wasn’t allowed to. When I asked her why, she said that “everyone else would want to.” What kind of juvenile nonsense was that? I don’t take kindly to idiotic rules and pushed back. It turned into a bit of a shouting match. Finally, she went away.

I was supposed to visit Janet at Tyson Wells on arrival and there was no way I was going to walk there in the inky blackness. So I backed out, found my way out the exit — after making two wrong turns; I did mention it was dark, didn’t I? — and went to Tyson Wells. I relaxed a little with her. We both agreed that it didn’t matter which way my rig pointed as long as I was parked in my site. After about 45 minutes, I went back to the campground, found my site, and nosed in.

Intimidation and Another Surprise

I was feeding my dogs less than 5 minutes later when someone outside said “knock knock.” It was a man’s voice. He said he was the manager.

Feeling intimidated by the appearance of a stranger in the dark, I opened the door just enough to talk to him. He said I had to back in because that was the rule. When I asked him why, at least he had a decent reason: he was worried about people tripping over my power cable, hose, sewer pipe, etc. I assured him that would not be a problem. I told him I’d had a long drive with a lot of traffic, was very tired, and was someplace I didn’t expect to be. He said that we’d talk about it in the morning and left.

(As Janet wondered the next morning, how could people trip over my cables and hoses if they were contained in my site? What would other people be doing in my site?)

After feeding and walking my dogs, I went out to plug in. There was no 30 amp power at my site, which is what my rig takes. Just 20 amp (household current) and 50 amp. Fortunately, I have an adapter. I plugged in and made a mental note not to run the coffee maker and microwave at the same time.

My Daily Routine

I slept like crap. I hate listening to freeway noise and there’s no escaping it at that campground.

In the morning, I was up as early as usual. At around 7, I unplugged, stored my cable, and left the campsite. Since I couldn’t easily walk from the campsite to Tyson Wells, I figured I’d just park at Tyson Wells every day. The camper has For Sale signs on it and it would be better to be someplace where a possible buyer might see it anyway.

I needed to get there early to get a good spot. I wound up parking on the main road, backed in so my camper door would be by the walkway and safer to get my pups in and out. That’s one of the benefits of my setup: I can fit in just about any parking space.

I took my pups on a short hike with Janet and her dogs at around 8:30, then stowed my pups in the camper, took out my ebike, and went to the rock show at Desert Gardens. I spent hours there. Then I got back, took my pups for a walk, stowed them again, and walked around the south side of Tyson Wells. Lots to see and buy! Parking at Tyson Wells during the day was working out very well for me.

At around 5 PM, after making dinner arrangements with Janet, I took the camper back to the campground. I passed the manager’s wife as I came in and noted that she was watching me closely. I backed in — it was easier that way since I had to plug in and unplug again in the morning. She didn’t bother me.

Janet came a while later and drove us to dinner at Taco Mio. (Highly recommended. I’m re-heating my leftovers on the stove now as I type this.) She dropped me back off around 7:30. I walked my pups again, then closed up for the night. No one bothered me.

That was Wednesday. On Thursday, I did pretty much the same thing, but took a different parking spot a bit farther down the road at Tyson Wells. This time, after our walk I treated myself to an excellent (but expensive!) cinnamon roll before putting the pups into the camper for the day.

Then I was off to the Pow Wow, which was the main show I’d come to Quartzsite for. It’s on the other side of the freeway, an easy ride from Tyson Wells (or the real Rice Ranch). I spent the whole day walking around looking at rocks.

After lunch and more rocks, I was burned out and went back to Tyson Wells. I told Janet I’d make dinner and she agreed to come to my campsite.

I stopped at RV Pitstop to get my propane bottles filled and Reader’s Oasis (which is sad without Paul) to look for affordable old atlas books. Then back to the campground. It was sometime around 4 PM. I backed in. This time, I plugged in power, connected my hose, and even connected my sewer pipe. I’d be leaving the next day and wanted to dump my waste tanks and top off my water tank before departure. I also wanted a good hot shower to get some of the Quartzsite dust off me. (If you’ve ever been here, you know what a losing battle that is.)

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, trucks came and went in a truck yard I hadn’t noticed before between the campground and the freeway. There was some talk over either a loudspeaker or a radio turned way up. This was the first time I’d heard it, since I hadn’t spent much time at the campground during the day. It was pretty annoying at times. Even Janet commented on it after she arrived around 5:30.

We had dinner inside my rig, watching a nice sunset at the end of what had been a cloudy — with even some rain! — afternoon. She stayed until about 7:30. After struggling with Quartzsite’s notoriously bad evening internet service — a topic for another blog post — I retired to my bed with a book and had another fitful night of sleep listening to freeway traffic.

The Psycho Bitch Goes Psycho

I had already decided to take Friday off from rock shopping. I figured I’d have a leisurely morning, dump my waste tanks, fill my water tank, and leave just before 11 AM, which was checkout time. I was looking forward to microwaving that leftover burrito from Taco Mio before unplugging and pulling out.

I dealt with the sewer tank first. That required me to dump everything, lift the hose — because the campground had a sewer port that was idiotically extended at least 10 inches above the ground — and continue lifting until all the waste was out. Then I had to add water to the toilet with the toilet chemical. Then clean the sewer hose. Then hook up the water filter and fill the fresh water tank.

Somewhere during this process, I left the back door of the camper open. My pups had been on the bed in a patch of sunlight. When I was finished with the hoses and had stowed them, I grabbed their leashes, ready to take them for a quick walk before I heated my early lunch. But they were not in the camper.

They were nowhere in sight.

I knew this wouldn’t end well, but I could never imagine just how poorly it would end. I called and called. The manager’s wife was in a golf cart and called out to me, “Are you looking for your dogs?”

I called back that I was. She pointed. I headed that way, still calling. The dogs appeared. I put them in the camper and closed the door.

The manager’s wife came up to me and I asked her, “Did they shit anywhere?” There’s one thing I’m very good about and that’s cleaning up after my dogs. So many places forbid dogs because of a few inconsiderate people that let their dogs shit all over the place. I’m not one of those people. I figured she was coming over to me to tell me that they’d made a mess somewhere and I was ready to go clean it up.

But no. She came to lecture me. “I don’t know,” she said. “Your dogs need to be on a leash here.”

“I didn’t even know they’d gotten out,” I said in my defense.

And then she went psycho.

She started screaming at me and kicked me out of the campground.

I had to laugh at her. I had 45 minutes left in my stay and she had decided to kick me out. She started ranting about me coming and going and told me she thought I was going to leave Wednesday and not come back. I said I’d paid for three nights and I wanted to use them. I told her that if she’d offered me a refund, I would have left. She said they had a 7 day refund policy. I said I wasn’t about to leave when I’d paid for the site.

She totally wigged out. It was as if she’d been harboring this anger against me since my arrival on Tuesday night and had used my loose dogs as an excuse to explode. It was crazy weird.

Broken Cable
The cable wasn’t like this before she yanked it out. The yellow thing is the adapter I needed to use because my site didn’t have 30 amp power.

When I told her I wasn’t going to leave until checkout time at 11 AM and went to drop off a poop bag in the nearly overflowing garbage dumpster, she stalked over to the power pedestal, roughly pulled out my power cord, and locked the box. I plugged it into the other side of the pedestal, thinking about the yummy burrito waiting to be heated! She yanked it out again. This time, she broke the cable.

I told her I wasn’t leaving until 11 AM. She threatened to call the police. I told her to call them. She must have told me another 10 times to leave and I just laughed at her. She got more and more angry. It was so funny to watch.

Then I tried to talk to the owner, who other people said was in a motorhome nearby. I spoke to a very nice older woman who seemed nearly as flustered as I was. But then the psycho bitch ran over and started trash talking me to her. I went back inside my camper, not even sure if I’d been speaking to the owner after all.

The psycho bitch came raving back to my rig and yelled at me to leave. I told her to call the police. I told her I’d paid up until 11 AM and that’s when I was leaving.

It was comical to see how crazy she got. She said she’d call 911 — as if I were some sort of emergency. She finally got someone on the phone. She was parked in her golf cart right next to my rig and read someone my license plate. She gave them my first name and when she couldn’t come up with my last name, I opened the window and told her what it was. I think she was extra annoyed when I spelled it for her.

And then she started lying to the cops. She told them that I said I was leaving but instead I was sneaking in and out at night so no one could talk to me. Utter bullshit. I was back at the campsite every single day before dark — she’d even watched me come in on Wednesday! Her lies totally pissed me off, so I called the cops, too. I told them what was going on and that I wanted to set the fact straight. The woman I spoke to said that there was only one officer for Quartzsite — poor woman! — and that she was already backed up on several calls. I gave the woman who answered the phone my name and phone number and told her that I saw no reason to wait around. I asked that the responding officer call me.

And then I loaded my pups into the truck and left. It was 10:45 AM. The psycho bitch was standing at the golf cart with two or three older women watching the road for the police car. It’s nearly 1 PM now and I wouldn’t be surprised if she is still waiting.

Back to the Desert

I drove out to the desert about a mile from there and found a nice spot for the rest of the day and the night. And don’t tell anyone, but my dogs were loose for 15 minutes!

Parked in the Desert
Although the BLM land in the desert around Quartzsite isn’t exactly scenic, it is free, quiet, and lacks psychotic managers.

I’d wanted to take the day off to do some writing, but never dreamed I’d be writing about nonsense like this. People who can’t keep their cool dealing with guests should not be running campgrounds. I’ll have a peaceful night here, away from the freeway. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at Tyson Wells for my morning hike with Janet and her dogs.

And yes, I’ve learned my lesson: the next time I book a campsite, it won’t be online. It’ll be on the phone where I can verify the location of the campground and the features available at my site.