Keith B. Darrell's Blog, page 11

Race to the Bottom

There's a lot of talk on the news today about the lack of civility, both in political discourse and in day to day interactions with our fellow citizens. Because if this, I think it's timely to repost this blog essay written in 2012 from my book More Essays of a Reluctant Blogger.



Race to the Bottom  (April 17, 2015):

I usually stick to one or two themes in each of my columns, but no fewer than five distinct themes comprise this week’s column. I’ll be addressing America’s peculiar instituti...

As the Sun Sets on Mount Kilimanjaro

Harlan Ellison died today. He had written long ago that he wanted his epitaph to be “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.” And matter he did. I’m probably not alone when I say I would not be the writer I am today if it were not for Harlan Ellison.
I don’t know how old I was when I read my first Ellison short story. By the time I was ten I had gorged myself on a steady diet of the older science fiction masters: Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthu...

Civility Cost Nothing and Buys Everything

There's a lot of talk on the news today about the lack of civility, both in political discourse and in day to day interactions with our fellow citizens. Because if this, I think it's timely to repost this blog essay written in 2012 from my book Collected Essays of a Reluctant Blogger.

Civility Cost Nothing and Buys Everything  (July 11, 2012):


One of the things I miss most from my youth is civility. Civility is defined as politeness or the act of showing regard for others. People were nice...

Baby Jails – How Donald Trump is Keeping Us Safe from Infants in Diapers

Depraved is the word I’d use to describe the Trump administration and its recent actions. Ripping infants and children from their mothers’ arms without even giving them a chance to say goodbye; shipping immigrant children to secret black sites set up across the nation where the American public, journalists, and even U.S. senators are denied access to see what is going on inside these makeshift internment camps, where credible reports have surfaced of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse of c...

Why You Should Care About Due Processs

Today President Donald Trump tweeted he wants to eliminate due process so he can deport illegal immigrants without notice (to have time to obtain legal counsel) or an opportunity to be heard at a court hearing to explain why they are seeking asylum: usually because they face death if returning to the country they've fled (or even allowed a "credible fear hearing" with an asylum officer).

This offends and concerns me, both as an American citizen, as an attorney who swore an oath to defend the U...

The Pinocchio President

I’ve been concerned about the Orwellian nature of the language espoused by Donald Trump and his administration and subsequently regurgitated by the media. If George Washington was the president who could not tell a lie, then Donald Trump is the president who cannot tell the truth. Trump’s lies as president began with his inauguration, a sparsely attended event compared to previous presidential inaugurations, which he described as having crowds that “looked like a million-and-a-half people”(th...

Return of the Reluctant Blogger

My new book, Return of the Reluctant Blogger , has just been published (look for it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Return-Reluctant-Blogger-Keith-Darrell/dp/1935971387). It's the third book in my "Reluctant Blogger" series, a collection of social commentary and humor drawn from my blog essays. This volume focuses on the problems with modern American business, the first year of the Trump administration, and assorted humorous anecdotes.

About the cover:

He showed up at my door one day along wi...

May is National Short Story Month

Did you know that May is National Short Story Month? Amber Book Company plans to celebrate by releasing a new volume of my short stories entitled  Shards: The Omnibus Edition . Many of you know me from my social commentary posts appearing on my blog, while others are familiar with my young adult science fiction series  The Adventures of Mackenzie Mortimer . Still others think of me as a novelist or epic storyteller, pointing to my four-book fantasy series Halos & Horns and...

Why Do You Write?

My friend Stallion and I were having one of our marathon discussions on the art of writing when he posed the question, Why do you write?

Reflexively, I turned the question back at him, in part to allow me time to compose a satisfactory answer. “To explore ideas,” Stallion said. Bookmark that response; we’ll come back to it. “What about you?” he asked.

My time up, I countered, “To explore, or describe, the human condition.”

“Interesting,” Stallion said. “You added the word describe, which implies...

Nightstalkers! Coming in One Week!

Next week, the vampires and werewolves you only thought you knew return in a brand new adventure! First introduced in the Halos & Horns fantasy saga, these vampires and lycanthropes have their own stories to tell. Pandora's a carefree party girl who just happens to be a vampire. With her best friend Sharon Mordecai, a hybrid vampire; her boyfriend Cody Fenris, a werewolf; and Cody's sister Lupe, who transforms into a wolf, they run Nightstalkers, Inc., a private detective agency in Las Ve...