TJ Baer

Author of novels, short stories, articles, and memoir pieces. 

T.J. Baer •

Veganuary: How to Go Vegan and Not Hate It

Greetings, friends, and a very merry Veganuary to you! After the approximately 500 years that comprised 2020, it’s nice to take a clean step into 2021 and entertain a shred of optimism that this year may be better. And while we can’t control what The World at large does, we can at the very least somewhat control the “better” in our own lives. And one way to do that is via what we eat.

When it comes to going vegan, most people exist somewhere on the spectrum between “ugh, never” and “tHiS iS tHe
Kuroneko Author Services •

4 Tips for Conquering Writer’s Block

As a writer, I don’t even like to speak its name, but I’ll try to be brave.

Writer’s block. Author kryptonite. You sit there staring at a blank page, typing the word “the” and erasing it over and over again until you begin to wonder if you’ll ever write a coherent sentence again.

So, what’s a blocked writer to do? While there is of course no hard-and-fast rule of how to get over writer’s block, here are a few ideas to get you moving in the right direction.

There’s a reason movies have soundtr
Kuroneko Author Services •

5 Tips For Self-Publishing an Awesome Book

You’ve written an amazing book, sure to be the next runaway bestseller, but what now? If you’ve decided to skip the traditional publishing route, that means that the one now in charge of making sure that your book looks good and sells well is you.

Well, crap, you think to yourself. I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t even know where to start.

While my biggest advice to you would, of course, be to use our services and let us do all this annoying stuff for you, if you’re determined to have a
Zero Waste Vegan •

Vegan Basics: But where do you get your protein?

If you feel like no one cares about you, your health, or what you do, announce that you’re vegetarian or vegan, and people will dash in from other rooms to inquire about whether your nutritional needs are being met. Guaranteed.

At some point, we all decided that protein was the shining golden child of nutrients, and we likewise agreed that the only possible place to get that vital macronutrient was via animal products like meat, dairy, eggs, etc.

As it turns out, however, this is incorrect. Be
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T.J. Baer •

SO YOU WANT TO BE A VEGAN… (Part 2: Calcium)

Hello, friends. You may remember me from such posts as SO YOU WANT TO BE A VEGAN… (Part 1) and Nutritiony Things I Have Learned # 1 (Protein). Or perhaps this is your first visit to my weird little blog, in which I case, welcome.

In today’s installment of SO YOU WANT TO BE A VEGAN, we’ll be looking at some common myths about veganism, because there are about 735,000 of them, and we should probably make a start on that. Today’s myth concerns calcium, and why these wacky vegans refuse to get it f
Photo by Ella Olsson on Pexels
T.J. Baer •

SO YOU WANT TO BE A VEGAN… (Part 1: Basics)

So, you want to be a vegan! Or, more likely, you don’t. Hey, that’s all right. Thassokay. No judgment here. We cool.

But even if you don’t want to be a vegan, maybe you have some questions or want to know a little bit about these mysterious kale-eating creatures, so hey, let’s start with a few basics.

According to Webster’s dictionary, a vegan is someone who willingly chooses to be bombarded with questions from everyone around them about their protein intake, nutritional well-being, deserted i
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past-ten •

June 12th, 2009 - T.J. Baer

The air was smothering, and I could already feel sweat creeping down the center of my back. I stood on the train platform weighed down by a bookbag and fashionable clothing, while all around me slender Japanese women dodged the sunlight with delicate parasols and long sleeves. The cicadas hadn’t emerged yet with their summery drone, but the land beyond the train tracks was lush and green, and the bump of a cold drink hitting a vending machine tray seemed to announce that summer had arrived in Ja
Photo by Ricardo Esquivel on Pexels
Flash Fiction Magazine •

Jump

He has a split second to decide—jump or stay—so he jumps. Air roars past his ears and he slams onto the back of the train with an impact that judders through his bones, and then he’s scrabbling to get a handhold while his lower half dangles madly off the edge. His fingernails scrape cold metal but finally find purchase, and he manages to haul himself fully onto the roof just as the train swerves onto a new track and then onto a bridge.

His heart feels like it’s trying to pound its way out of hi