Michael Medina

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@Rippalorian Condolences. Such a handsome boy.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@AuthorGFAllen Shelf space is limited these days, so physical for my favorites and digital for authors I'm not as familiar with. My own personal seal of approval is that if I read your ebook and really love it, I buy it again in physical to keep on my shelf.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@Rippalorian Recently finished the second draft of my first novel. I came up with the beginning and end, and then another few significant points in between that I could build up to. Everything else was me discovering the story as I go.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@AuthorGFAllen Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Made me a lifelong fan of his.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

What an absolute travesty it is to demolish Toriyama's house. We've lost the legend himself, and now ground zero for a cultural icon is gone as well.

[Anime Updates @animeupdates]

According to direct reports from visitors on the ground, DRAGON BALL' creator Akira Toriyama's home and Bird Studio are being demolished

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

"I'd rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived. After all, Number One, we're only mortal." --Captain Picard.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@DWARussell22 That's going to look beautiful on my shelf!

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

Oh Captain, my Captain. Thank you for being one of the greatest actors of our age. Your contributions to the arts will always be remembered.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@jeffreyd2420 Nice! Just started this one myself, and Bloodforged Dawn is already pre-ordered.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@zayarts21 I love defined abs, but perhaps softening the black lines and relying on the shadows to outline them would be a nice middle ground.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

Maybe 15 years ago, this would have been devastating news, but sadly many AAA games don't deliver on the hype or offer the quality and passion they used to. No big loss, though, as most of my entertainment now comes from AA and indie games and indie sci-fi and fantasy novels.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@WritingStickMan @DWARussell22 The first two are among my favorite indie books of recent years. Already pre-ordered the third. His cover art is always fantastic, too.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

Gotta be the coolest cover I've seen for an indie book. Heck, I can't think of too many tradpub covers that have caught my eye like this. Get out there and support this trilogy. The first two books are great!

[Russell Carroll - Dog Walking Author @DWARussell22]

Bloodforged Dawn in all its glory! Pre-sales now open only $1.99. Limited ARC copies available. @JasonWMizer knocked the cover out of the park and is open for commissions!!!

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

Never Forget 🇺🇸

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯 @japan_nobunaga]

At Ground Zero, after the last living person was pulled out, the search dogs stopped eating.

So the police did something nobody had written down in any manual.

They climbed into the rubble, lay down, and pretended to be alive.

More than 300 dogs worked the World Trade Center site. They came from every corner of the country, on trucks and in cargo holds, with handlers who had been trained to do one thing. Find people who are still breathing under the ground.

That is what a search and rescue dog is built for. Not bodies. Life. They are trained on live human scent. When they find it, they bark, they dig, they light up, and the handler rewards them, and the whole thing means something.

The last living person recovered from Ground Zero was a woman named Genelle Guzman-McMillan. She had been buried for 27 hours. A dog found her.

She was the last.

After that, the dogs kept going out on twelve-hour shifts, across sixteen acres of smoldering steel, at temperatures that burned their paws, and they found nobody.

Nobody.

Day after day.

The handlers noticed it first. The dogs were changing. Their tails were down. They were not eating. They would come off the pile and lie flat and not look at anyone.

A veterinarian named Cindy Otto, who spent ten days there working night shifts to care for the animals, put it plainly. The dogs had been sent to find life, and every day they were finding the opposite.

It was breaking them.

An NYPD officer named Famiglietti described what happened next.

They pulled everybody off the rubble. Then they asked for volunteers.

The volunteers, police officers, went out into the debris and hid themselves. Under beams. In voids. Curled up in pockets of concrete. They were told to lie down like they were hurt. Then the handlers sent the dogs in.

Picture that.

A grown man with a badge, a man who had spent the last week pulling friends out of that same pile, lying down in it on purpose. Face down. Holding still. Waiting for a dog.

And the dog comes over the top of the wreckage, and catches the scent, and barks, and digs, and finds a person who is warm and moving and alive.

And the handler says good girl, good boy, and the whole team celebrates.

They called them mock finds.

They did it for the dogs.

They did it so the dogs would remember what they were for.

One of those dogs was a two-year-old golden retriever named Bretagne. She came from Texas with her handler, Denise Corliss. It was her first deployment. They worked ten days at Ground Zero. They found no survivors.

But firefighters would come off the pile, stone-faced, not speaking, and see the dog, and something would break open in them. They would kneel down. They would put their face in her fur.

One day a man walked up to Bretagne and started petting her. He told Corliss his best friend loved golden retrievers.

Corliss asked where his friend was.

The man pointed at the pile.

"He's in there somewhere."

He kept petting the dog.

Bretagne went on to work Hurricane Katrina and Rita. She retired at 10. She was the last known surviving search dog of 9/11.

On June 6, 2016, at age 16, she was carried into a veterinary office in Texas to be put to sleep.

Outside, a dozen firefighters from her fire department stood in a line in their dress uniforms, in the heat, and saluted as she went past.

They draped her in an American flag on the way out.

Three hundred dogs went into that pile looking for the living.

They found one.

And when they could not find any more, the men they worked beside laid down in the rubble and let themselves be found, so the dogs would not lose heart.

That is the whole story of Ground Zero, really.

Nobody could save the dead.

So they saved each other. 🇺🇸

[Xaviaer DuRousseau @XAVIAER]

“I’ll do it for Charlie.”

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

We haven't forgotten. There's still work to be done. 🇺🇸

[Kamen America (仮面アメリカ) @kamenamerica]

If you have one shot at the World Warriors, GO FOR BROKE!

The amazing @superbull164164 CRUSHED IT with his dynamic cover featuring Kamen America, Chun-Li, and the Dolls!

STREET FIGHTER X KAMEN AMERICA enters the 2nd day of funding! Link below!

https://t.co/HLnOcMTRlc

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@MrBoneshaha I can see that. I don't mind exaggerated proportions, especially when it comes to superheroes, but truth be told I went with Cover B, and I'll likely add on cover A as well.

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

Pledge secured. Y'all get in there and show the Iconic team some love!

[Michael Medina @MichaelAdCrucem]

@J0hnADouglas The Monday Tribute has made my TBR so long, and I'm not complaining about that.