Yesterday morning, I stole a bottle of hand sanitizer. It was completely premeditated. I ran downtown to the convenience store on the corner of Erie St and St. Patrick St. Immediately upon entering, I swiped the hand sanitizer bottle off the checkout counter and bolted. I didn’t make it far. As you can see from the map below, the police station is only two blocks away from the scene of my crime:

As I ran down St. Patrick St with the stolen antiseptic, sirens began to sound. Two cruisers pursued me until I escaped down a side alley. The masked cops then chased me on foot, eventually cornering me behind the fish n’ chip stop the health unit shut down because the halibut weren’t vaccinated.

“Drop the hand sanitizer and put your hands in the air,” ordered the shorter cop.

I raised my hands but held tight to the squirt bottle. The taller cop took aim and fired his taser. Paralysis seized me and I fell to the ground.

“Hand over the hand sanitizer,” yelled the shorter cop as he approached.

“Never!”

He then pressed the electrodes of his taser into my arm. However, 50,000 volts flowing through my nervous system only made me clutch the bottle tighter.

A few hours later, I stood before a judge at the Perth County Courthouse. He asked me why I committed such a bizarre act of thievery. After all, I never even use hand sanitizer and I don’t drink alcohol. Was this a form of protest? Have I lost mind?

“Novel research,” I told the judge.

You see, the Much Ado About Corona novel I’ve been writing (and re-writing) for the last twenty-one months involves cops with tasers.

Two police officers beta read the manuscript for me. I had asked each of them how it felt to be stunned by a taser. One told me it was excruciating pain. The other said it felt no worse than one’s leg going to sleep. Not sure whose testimonial to go with, I figured getting tased myself would be the best way to find out.

The judge seemed impressed with my explanation (or, at least, entertained). He made me promise to send him an autographed copy of the novel when it’s ready and let me off with nineteen hours of community service (picking up mask litter around town).

Likewise, both of the retired Canadian police officers who read draft twelve of Much Ado About Corona seemed impressed and entertained with the novel. Here’s what they had to say:

“I enjoyed Much Ado About Corona immensely. The police interaction was bang on and the subtleties are not so subtle and portray an authentic realism to me. Constable Mackenzie is a tragic character.”—Retired Constable Leland “Lee” Keane, Royal Canadian Mounted Police

“I’ve commented many times how history will be written to falsely show how our government ‘saved’ us from extinction. Much Ado About Corona slowly brings forward the invisible truth one piece at a time. The novel flows well, has an original story, maintained my attention and has an unexpected good ending.”—Retired Constable Vincent Gircys, Ontario Provincial Police

As Gircys says, history could easily leave a false record of what is transpiring in the world today—especially if the COVID coup is at all successful. In order for our children to live in a future world where truth prevails, we need truth to become part of our culture today. And what better way to influence culture than with fiction? (It seems to work for the World Hoax Organization.)

As novelist Walter Mosley says in his Masterclass: “If you want to be in the history of the culture, then you have to exist in the fiction. If you don’t exist in the literature, your people don’t exist.”

“Our people” are those who are immune to mass hypnosis. Our people are those who value freedom over security and truth over conformity. We don’t belong to any specific race, country or religion. We are the outcasts, the unvaccinated, the conspiracy theorists… the truthers, the courageous, the ones who are willing to face reality in all its stark horror and hidden beauty. We, if I may be so bold, are the future of humanity as depicted in Jordan Henderson’s painting, Brighter Future:

Much Ado About Corona makes heroes out of those who are resisting the global tyranny we face today. It is my hope that the novel helps make truth, courage and freedom normal again.

I had planned to have the book published by Christmas. Instead, I’ll be content if I have draft thirteen complete before New Year’s Day. After that, I’ll be producing one more draft, based on the suggestions of Nowick Gray, my line editor. The final draft will then be cleansed of typographical errors by a professional copy editor. After that it’ll be formatted and checked over again by many volunteer proofreaders.

The novel is now 150,000 words long (500 pages in print). This has become almost a standard length in the thriller genre (e.g. David Baldacci’s books are this length). It’s still rather short for the fantasy genre (e.g. the Outlander books average 1,000 pages each).

I expect this final inch of work will all take another month (so probably two). I hope to release it in January, but it may take until February. Being a dystopian love story, I may publish it on Valentine’s Day. After all, it’s ultimately a book about love over fear.

The saddest thing about the COVID-19 scamdemic is that the tyrants are pretending that lockdowns, social distancing, segregation and vaccines are all acts of love and kindness. It reminds me of the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

“There are some upon this earth of yours… who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.”

People fear the new normal tyrants so much they are willing to believe they are angels of mercy here to save humanity from the common cold. It’s no surprise to me that, once again at Christmas, the COVID coup is doing their utmost to discourage people from gathering with friends and families, and instead pressuring people to isolate themselves like New Normal Scrooges.

As always, please do not comply with such humbug policies. Even though I’m as busy as ever trying to complete this novel, we’ll still be cooking up a feast for family and friends. And my musical son will still be leading us in unmasked Christmas carolling.

Lastly, while Much Ado About Corona did not meet my overly optimistic December deadline, I will be releasing a sneak peak of the novel on the 25th. Watch your inbox Christmas morning for a slightly satirical scene from the novel featuring the Prime Minister of Canada on Christmas Day 2020.

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Update: Much Ado About Corona was published in 2022. You can read (or listen to me) read the Christmas excerpt here, purchase it here or read more testimonials here.