Fiction, Publishing

Your dilemma, should you choose to accept it…

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Andrew Klavan’s new Young Adult novel, The Last Thing I Remember, will be released by Thomas Nelson on April 28, according to this interview (Part 1) over at Big Hollywood.

This naturally raises an interesting dilemma for you, the discerning but budget-savvy consumer.

Because my novel, West Oversea, is scheduled for release this month, too. (Or in May anyway. June at the latest.)

So where do you spend your hard-earned book-buying dollar?

I’ll make it easy for you. Buy my book. For the following comprehensive, compelling reasons.

1) Andrew Klavan is already famous. I’m still behind Thorstein Veblen in the list of famous people who grew up in Kenyon, Minnesota. And I’m getting old.

2) Klavan is bald. I have a handsome, thick head of healthy gray hair. The implications should be obvious.

3) Klavan’s book will come out in paperback eventually. Mine will be paperback from the git-go.

I rest my case.

Authors, Writing

A Good Reason to Write

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Andrew Peterson links to an essay by N.D. Wilson for good reasons to write fiction. “For many children, the only nobility, the only joy, the only strength and sacrifice that they see firsthand comes in fiction,” Wilson claims.

Goofing

The service economy, unpacked

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I’m bubbling with ideas today. It’s kind of scary.

I’ve figured out why service is always lousy in this country.

When the economy is good, you can’t get good service because the best people are all working in higher-paying jobs.

When the economy is bad, you can’t get service because the employer has cut to back staff.

Goofing

The crime of self-defence

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“Why,” you may ask, “has Pres. Obama (peace be upon him) opened the door to the prosecution of former Bush administration legal advisors, those who gave opinions that techniques like waterboarding could be legally employed on captured terrorists? Isn’t that ex post facto law? Won’t it have a chilling effect on speech, warning people that they can be called into court merely for expressing an opinion? And won’t it be dangerous for our national security?”

Ah, but you miss the genius of the strategy. I’ve got it figured out, I think.

For conservatives, the ideal condition for our country is to be free, strong and respected in the world.

But for liberals, the ideal condition is to be a victim. Liberals love victims. Victims get all the love and sympathy, as well as lots of presents.

For liberals, the greatest moment in recent history was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11/01, when the president of France said, “Today, we are all Americans.”

Liberals desperately want to recapture that glorious moment.

And of course the simplest way to accomplish that is to be attacked again. For liberals, it’s a tragedy that our interrogators learned about plans for another terrorist bombing in Los Angeles through using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

For the Left–the hard Left, anyway–that’s an opportunity lost. If we could have just had another smoking tower and thousands dead in Los Angeles, the world would have loved us again!

A few thousand dead is a small price to pay for satisfaction like that. The hard Left figures we have way too many people around anyway.

Creative Writing

Up from slush

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I’ve made a careful survey, and I think I can say authoritatively that I’m now the only blogger in the world who’s never mentioned Susan Boyle.

Oops. Scratch that.

Over at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, there’s this amusing article about the (vain and counterproductive) lengths some writers go to, to get a magazine editor’s attention. It’s a fun read, and there’s much wisdom there. (Tip: Loren Eaton at I Saw Lightning Fall.)

I enjoyed reading this article in particular because there are a number of quotes there from George Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer, who used to be my agents. Before they were my agents, they were my editors at Amazing Stories, which gives me a rare opportunity to feel smug, since I managed to please these discerning connoisseurs of slush, once upon a time.

I’ll tell you how I made my first sale to them, too, at no extra charge. Continue reading Up from slush →

Blogs, Socials, Writing

Blogging Gets You Writing

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Frank Wilson writes about blogging and creative writing. “If there is any benefit to be derived from blogging it starts with the doing of it. Writers write. Blogging is a good way of finding out if you have what it takes to sit down at regular intervals and write something. For someone like me, who already has deadlines to meet, it’s a good way to start the work day, like practicing scales.”

Still, I feel the need to write fiction or prose more, and blogging pulls me away from that. I want to pray more too. So I need to watch my time use.

Poetry

“Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun”

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I.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

II.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,

For I have more.

III.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;

And having done that, Thou hast done ;

I fear no more.

“A Hymn to God the Father,” by John Donne

The Press

How much untruth can you squeeze into a two-letter word?

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Theodore Dalrymple, the great English physician and social commentator, meditates on the question in this piece at FrontPage Magazine.

It is intrinsically unlikely that a man espouses a totalitarian doctrine of proved and indisputable viciousness and violence from a love of peace and a dislike of poverty.

Uncategorized

Saw Iowa, lived to tell the tale

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I should probably start by noting that I was wrong (again) about the price of the new book. It will be $12.95. A further saving for you, the valued consumer!

I rode down to Iowa with four other guys on Saturday. Not Viking stuff, but Sverdrup Society stuff. We had a meeting in Radcliffe, Iowa, which is where my paternal grandfather spent his childhood, and it’s a place I haven’t visited much, so I thought I’d go. (Travel report: it looks pretty much like the rest of Iowa.)

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed it. We talked all the way down and back (it’s about a three-hour trip), and I actually had a good time. Even now my subconscious is working in the background, reprocessing the memory, finding reasons to believe that I made a jerk of myself and spoiled everybody’s day, but—for the record—I had a good time.

I heard a couple memorable quotations. A pastor of Finnish ancestry told us something his father used to say—“I don’t know if I understand all these things I know.”

And someone quoted an old North Dakota farmer, what you’d call a “character,” known to a couple of the guys present, who used to say, “These modern times! When will they end?”

Tonight, more proofing.

When will it end?

Book Reviews, Creative Culture