Erica Verrillo

Author of #fantasy & medical books. Certain people should probably avoid meeting me in a dark alley, but otherwise harmless. #MECFS #writer

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

In 1975 I decided to hitchhike to Antarctica. I only made it as far as Argentina, where I fell in love with a handsome guerrilla. Soon I became a target in the Dirty War. I had to escape, but my passport was a death sentence and the military was closing in on us . #A #mem #PitMad

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

The June 2026 Publishing & Other Forms of Insanity newsletter is out! Submission calls, free writing contests, literary agents, publishing opps & more! (It's free!) #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/LV97utjGwc

[Dylan Byers @DylanByers]

New statement from Scott Pelley:

There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.

The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.

“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.

The waste is heartbreaking.

Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.

For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.

I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.

Scott Pelley

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

Don't condemn Muhammad and his companions for waging wars, raiding caravans, marrying children, owning slaves, degrading women, or engaging in brutal violence.

Raiding rival tribes was standard. Child marriage was practiced. Slavery was the norm. Tribal codes, honor killings, conquest, this was the fabric of life in that time and place.

The real problem isn’t what Muhammad did. The real problem is that what he did was declared sacred.

His every action wasn’t just recorded, it was immortalized, canonized and sanctified.

His tribal conduct wasn’t left in the 7th century, it was elevated as timeless law for the entire world.

He didn’t just live in history, he froze history in place and called it religion.

What should have been contextualized as ancient is now institutionalized as eternal.

What should have been buried with time is now resurrected in legal codes, school curriculums, and acts of terror.

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

47 Glorious Writing Conferences and Workshops in June 2026. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/W9Wic6pJOO

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

🧵On This Day — June 2, 1982

Yad Vashem named Jan Karski, a Polish Catholic, Righteous Among the Nations.

He risked everything to witness the Holocaust & report to the Allies, including FDR.

To begin, he broke down describing, for the first time in 35 years, the Warsaw Ghetto.

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

58 Writing Contests in June 2026 - No entry fees! #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/X9qJNtLPij

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

@CptAllenHistory Accurate history. Now here's a question for the UN. About 80K - 100K Arabs were living in Gaza prior to the 1948 war. They weren't forced to flee. They just stayed in Gaza. Yet they were designated as refugees. Do their descendants have right of return? (Return to where? Gaza?)

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

47 Glorious Writing Conferences and Workshops in June 2026. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity #MondayBlogs https://t.co/W9Wic6pJOO

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

57 Writing Contests in June 2026 - No entry fees! #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity #MondayBlogs https://t.co/X9qJNtLPij

[Jason Bassler @JasonBassler1]

When the BlackRock CEO says the quiet part out loud, it stops being a “conspiracy theory.”

How did this quote not break the internet?

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

The June 2026 Publishing & Other Forms of Insanity newsletter is out! Submission calls, free writing contests, literary agents, publishing opps & more! (It's free!) #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity #MondayBlogs https://t.co/LV97utjGwc

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

Everything I Did Wrong: Designing An Author's Website. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity #MondayBlogs https://t.co/xU4TsWKMfS

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

86 Calls for Submissions in June 2026 - Paying markets. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity #MondayBlogs https://t.co/OKtymCdfLg

[NoelCaslerComedy @caslernoel]

“Nothing is more central to the ruse of Trumpism than making his followers believe he is somehow virile, and in command, on the world stage. He is not.

He is a bumbling, almost-octogenarian drug addict who was so unmanageable in his reality TV show days (in which I worked with his family) that his call times were always late afternoon - and even then, he cancelled much of the time.

Trump simply was not functional - or all that interested in working; a trait he shares with his children. They showed up on the ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ finale tapings as if they were some sort of royal family descending from their penthouse perches to mingle with the commoners for a few hours.

Don Jr. was a notoriously bad drunk who was semi-dry for a while, before slipping in to the obviously coked-out years of his father’s two presidential terms. Working has never really entered his mind. Junior has fleeced the MAGA faithful for years, along with his old man - before now focusing his greedy, beady eyes on the American taxpayer and no-bid Pentagon contracts.

We learned this week that the White House, courtesy of Peter Navarro, intervened on behalf of a $620 million Pentagon loan to a mining company, Vulcan Elements, that Don Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, took a stake in just three months earlier.

Besides the fast-tracked loan, the company also received $50 million in Commerce Department incentives. Don Jr.’s firm’s assets under management has grown from $200 million to $3.5 billion in a year. He refers to this success as ‘Patriotic Capitalism’, but most folks would call it what it is, corruption and graft in plain sight.

The staggering AUM adds to the long list of handouts and kickbacks he and his brother Eric have amassed in recent months by helping themselves to U.S. Defense Department contracts, and trading on their father’s presidency for private, for-profit Trump Organization development deals across the world.

Lest we forget, much of their old man’s last campaign was based around Hunter Biden’s laptop and the fact he had sold a few oil paintings.

Basically, the difference between panhandling outside on the sidewalk or walking in and robbing the bank. The MAGA faithful bought the ‘Biden Crime Family’ BS lock, stock and barrel because they were told to - by the culture that reinforces the Trump clan’s grifting and by the sleight-of-hand Donald employs with his constant demonization of Democrats and his endless dancing in front of flags.”https://t.co/1ulQFV6Odg

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

Everything I Did Wrong: Designing An Author's Website. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/xU4TsWKMfS

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

@CptAllenHistory Remember "the concept" prior to the Yom Kippur War? It was dead wrong. The idea that if you just give people material benefits (e.g. give Gazans food, land, building supplies, etc) they will become peaceful neighbors is also "the concept." It is dead wrong for the same reasons.

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

In 2005, Israel gave Palestinians exactly what the world demanded: “Land for Peace.”

They unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, but got no peace.

The IDF forcibly removed every last Jew — even digging up Jewish graves. Gaza was made completely Jew-free, exactly as Palestinians demanded.

Israel handed over thriving communities, farms, and hundreds of millions in infrastructure — including productive greenhouses that could have become an economic engine for a Palestinian state.

What did the Palestinians do with this gift?

They destroyed it.

Mobs looted and burned the greenhouses. They ransacked and demolished synagogues. They celebrated with Hamas flags and gunfire.

Then, in January 2006, they voted Hamas — a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews — into power.

By 2007, Hamas completed a bloody coup, threw Fatah members off rooftops, and seized total control of Gaza.

The result?

- Tens of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians

- More than 500 miles of underground terror tunnels

- Billions in international aid stolen for war, not welfare

- Gaza transformed into a fortified Islamic terror enclave

Land for peace was tried — and violently rejected.

Everything Israel gave away in 2005 became the launchpad for the October 7 Massacre.

This is the ultimate proof: the Palestinian movement has never wanted a state living next to Israel. Its goal has always been the destruction of the Jewish state — in any part of the Land.

Important note: The blockade only came after Hamas seized power in 2007 and turned Gaza into a launchpad for war. And when that happened, Egypt joined it too.

Disengagement didn’t bring peace.
It brought the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

LAST CALL! 22 writing contests for short fiction, novels, poetry, CNF, nonfiction, and plays have deadlines TODAY and TOMORROW! (No entry fees!) #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/dscKe1CnUt

[Erica Verrillo @EricaVerrillo]

LAST CALL! 50 submission calls have deadlines TODAY & TOMOROW! All are paying markets. No submission fees! Every genre & style is wanted, from short stories to poetry to essays. #writingtips #amwriting #publishing #writing #pubtip #WritingCommunity https://t.co/r1woBzJKcB