Jack LaFountain's Blog, page 29

The Colonel #95 Child Predators

“…2022 has been a year of high inflation, exacerbated by a predatory student debt system which forces many to at the very minimum to put their lives on hold for years to pay it off.”

Oliver Povey

A glowing full moon throws a silvery light over a narrow sidewalk where a shadowy figure stalks an unsuspecting teenager walking home alone. The youngster is lost in fanciful dreams of the future—the university he will attend, the high-paying job he will hold, how he will change the corrupt, oppressive world around him.

Unseen by the youth, his parents push the figure stalking him from the shadows and into his path. Mesmerized by the tales he told of how easily the life he is entitled to will happen; he signs upon the line pledging to pay tens of thousands of dollars.

Years later the stranger returns with demands that he pays up. But it’s soooo hard, he will have to delay buying all the trappings of success he’s entitled to. It’s unfair! He has been victimized—again, preyed upon by greedy capitalists.

Thankfully, he’s not alone, there are millions like him and they can get the government to make the bad men wanting money go away with their magic eraser.

A President once said Americans should ask what they can do for their country. That’s a ridiculous notion of the past, young people are more evolved now. The country owes them for deigning to even participate in society. They should not be asked to pay for college. How dare you!

Given the size of the national debt, politicians who dare to entertain the thought of dismissing student debt need to be hung as traitors. Predatory loans, the idea of lurking bankers slinking around in dark alleyways and waylaying unsuspecting youth, is ridiculous.

Perhaps that’s why Americans\ waited for a senile fool to be elected to not only seriously broach the subject, but to actually do it. Let’s go Brandon!

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Know Jack #344 How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

“Don’t spend too much time researching good writing.”

Stephen King

Some of the biggest moneymakers in the writing business seem to be those who are selling books, webinars, and courses on how to write, and how to be a writer. While I don’t advocate ignoring good advice, these self-help gurus are about as much help as diet gurus. By the way, how did your last diet go?

Ultimately writing, like a diet, is a lifestyle that you adopt forever. This means you have to work it out yourself from material gathered from a lot of trial and error. There are no magic pills, no magic formulas, and no overnight successes. That is unless you wish to count just sitting at the keyboard every day and gutting it out.

It sounds like a Catch-22, but actually writing is the best way to become a better writer. Well, that and a willingness to show your work to people unafraid to call it crap to your face. (So beware of woke groups who only say positive things.) Honest criticism is the ignition for research into good writing—find out why critics think your stuff is crap. They might be wrong, but don’t count on it, and they can’t all be wrong.

They are being honest. You be honest too--honest with yourself. You don’t have to admit your faults to the critics, but you owe it to yourself to do so. It may be just my personality, but someone panning my writing inspires me to say, “Hold my beer and watch this @*%$!”

I may write this little advice blog every week, but I’m no expert. I’m not convinced there are any real experts. There are only writers who have found what works for them and have a clear vision of how they measure success. That does not mean it will work for you no matter how slick it is marketed.

It’s not a cop-out to decide that you’re not going to be the next big thing in the world of literature. The only real cop-out is settling for being less than the best writer you can be.

I will close with one final note about writers and research. While you don’t need to be distracted from writing to study writing, if you wish to write well, you must do research. This is true of all fiction, not just historical fiction. Find out when moonrise and moonset happen with each phase of the moon. Can silver really be crafted into bullets? If there’s a song playing on the radio, or a slang term in a conversation was it part of the time period you’re writing about?

Find out.

A young writer in a group I once belonged to shared a dialogue that was supposed to take place in 1970 San Francisco. It was well-received by the group, except for this one old guy who lived in that area that year. I had to temper my comments while letting the man down—it didn’t sound like that in ’70.

Research helps make your story believable. You want your readers to believe all the lies you’re telling. The way to do that is to mix it with a heavy dose of truth. Bottom line, research your subject, not your writing.

Oh, if you don’t know the answer to the title question—Google it.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #132 Touching the Resurrection

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God…But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

Matthew 22:29-32

The greatest mistake one can make in approaching the scriptures is to read them with a made-up mind. Jesus’ audience in this instance were the Sadducees, biblical scholars, teachers, and religious leaders who prided themselves on their knowledge of the scriptures.

Yet, in their zeal to defend their beliefs, failed in the most basic of applications of what they read. These men had doubtless read the passage Jesus quoted to them countless times and boasted (at least to themselves) about their lineage from Abraham.

It was not I was the God, but I am the God of Abraham. That is, He continues to be the God of Abraham because Abraham still lives and worships Him as such. This relationship of human sharing in the eternal divine nature has always been the plan of God for humanity.

Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as a demonstration of the truth of scripture and testimony to the power of God. Make no mistake about that. The angel told the women at the tomb, “He is risen, as He said.” He came to die as the true sacrificial Lamb of God to restore peace on earth and God’s goodwill toward humanity (with all its imperfections). He rose again, as He said he would, to prove the power of God in sealing the deal.

Because Jesus lives beyond the body of flesh, so too shall we. In that life beyond the mortal flesh, we will live in harmony with God or be separated from God as we choose, or more accurately, as we have already chosen.

Sifting the meaning and relevance of what we read has everything to do with how we approach the text. This is true with any writing, fiction or nonfiction, and is never truer than when approaching the scriptures.

If a person steadfastly chooses to disregard the veracity and power of God inherent in the scripture, reading the Bible will only evoke that predetermined vision. The Sadducees had decided there was no resurrection and refused to see it when they read it, and had it explained to them.

By way of contrast, the unlearned multitude, without a scholarly reputation to defend, heard it and were amazed by its simple truth. In a polarized society such as ours, this lesson is for more than some far off eternity, it is the key to modern understanding and peace.

Maranatha

The Colonel #94 The Spirit of ‘76

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Adopting Rousseau’s dark complaint that freedom is everywhere thwarted by the enslaving effects of human society and culture seems to me to lead only to more of the same chains. Ample proof is evident in the daily lives of many of my fellow countrymen.

Despite their freedom, they see chains and oppression tightly woven into the fabric of their existence without plausible remedy. They are forever in chains, held back by the insidious tendrils of those natural-born oppressors who refuse to share their opinions, philosophy, and lifestyle. Helplessly bound, they await deliverance at the hands of rewritten history, and the rise of a government of the victims, for the victims, and by the victims.

Even with the advent of a government insanely steeped in the adoration of victimhood and dedicated to the proposition that equality of opportunity is not enough, man is, predictably, everywhere still in chains.

Building a future in which one is not responsible for his own failure, and has at hand a readymade scapegoat, rather than producing a go-for-broke struggle to succeed, robs people of incentive, and gives way to the “why bother” attitude common in today’s wards of the State.

This is not the spirit of freedom upon which America was built—it is the road back to the tyranny from which we sprang. In juxtaposition to Monsieur Rousseau, I offer his American contemporary, Samuel Adams, “all might be free if they valued freedom and defended it as they ought.”

Freedom is valued at a personal level and, though men are born with it, attainable only to those willing to defend their right to it. Freedom and the exercise of personal liberty are not the gifts of governments—they are gifts from God.

In 1776, the rag-tag group of armed citizens who rallied to the call for freedom had no realistic expectation that they could defend the freedom they proclaimed. The king had at his disposal the mightiest army and navy in the world. He had loyal subjects within the country who were willing by force of arms to defend his sovereignty.

Nevertheless, men like Adams, believed that their fetters could be thrown off. They expected no one to ride to the rescue and do their duty for them. If freedom was to be won, they must win it themselves. How very different that is from those, on the one hand, who expect the government to hand them freedom and those on the other side who expect the government to guard it for them.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #343 Slaughter of the Innocents

“In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”

Matthew 2:18

Novels are like children. We give birth to them with much patience, pain, and travail, and that’s just the beginning. We tend to their every need, rush to their every cry, dress them, feed them, and mold them. Then, one day they go off into the care of well-meaning strangers who say they have only the best interests of the children in mind.

Lying in wait along the way to those “best interests”, are merciless editors—creatures born without a heart or soul. As soon as a book begins its journey, editors fall upon their helpless prey, swords at the ready. Like savages they proceed to torture our babies: cutting off their limbs, ripping out their tongues, and chopping off their heads before delivering the bleeding remains to the author.

The scene that follows is reminiscent of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Weeping will not save them. Pleading avails nothing. Their only hope is that there lies within their creator the power to resurrect them from the dead.

Can the one who gave them life raise them again? The answer lies in the heart—or more precisely, the ego—of the author.

Unconditional love, the kind we have for our children, whether flesh or paperback, often requires the sacrifice of our wishes to give the child the fullest, best life possible. Not every writer is capable of that kind of love, and even for those determined to do the right thing, it’s not an easy path to walk.

Sending a book out into the world alone means trusting in the job you did bringing it to life and that you have given it what it needs to survive. There is more at stake in doing the right thing by our books than seeing them made into a bound volume with our name on the cover.

Our integrity and commitment as a writer hang in the balance. The brutality of the editors reflects directly on our parenting skills. I’m a stubborn, argumentative man who comes down hard when crossed or my goals are frustrated.

In my personal dealings, I give too little reflection upon the consequences of shooting from the hip and letting God sort out the dead and wounded. I call it my Masada complex, though I’m sure there is not such a glorious name for it.

Strangely, the only instance in which my thoughts lean first to acceptance when facing criticism is with my writing. This is so not because I doubt my skills as a writer, or that I don’t value winning. I just know when I am blind to my own faults. (I wish I could translate that into my personal dealings with people.)

I’ve read a sentence I’ve written a dozen times and not realized that I wrote “no” instead of “not”. I’ve seen it on the face of readers when my King James leaning word choices and sentence structure draw puzzled looks. Well, that has to go—because what the reader sees/understands is more important to the story than my style.

I know enough to know that I’m not completely flexible though. I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that werewolves, vampires, and haunted houses are passé. Yet, I keep on writing them the way I see them—bloody and without zing or sparkle.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #131 God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own.

“So when the Samaritans were come unto him (Jesus), they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his word; and they said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”

John 4:40-42

Perhaps you’ve read about Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. If not here’s the gist of it: Jesus broke tradition and addressed a woman who had come alone to draw some water from the community well. After some Q&A about why he did that, Jesus pointed out her life thus far had been less than stellar. This drew from her an epiphany that he was the promised Christ.

Thrilled she had met the Messiah, she went into town and began telling people about what she had discovered. The townspeople when out to see for themselves and upon hearing Jesus drew the same conclusion as the woman. In what was probably a less than friendly way, they made sure to downplay her role in pointing out Jesus. But, in doing so, made a very strong case for Christianity based on personal experimentation.

Pastors, preachers, and priests are heralds of the good news of the gospel,

and they have a high calling of great responsibility—but…

While faith comes by hearing the word of God, faith is more than hearing. Faith is more than belief and more than what can be reasoned from the scriptures. It is even more than meeting Jesus. Faith is all of these in combination that initiates personal action.

The prime action of faith is to make peace with God. The scripture says that many are called to this action, but few take it. This is so because the peace treaty is non-negotiable. It is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition made by God that demands unconditional surrender. These are not terms well suited to those who must be in charge, must be right, must be the winner, and must be first—in a word, terms contrary to the natural state of the human mind.

Neither accepting nor rejecting God’s terms makes the Creator more or less than He already is. So, what does God get out of our making peace with Him? The satisfaction of seeing His Creation restored to the original design—a loving fellowship with humanity.

What do people get out of this surrender? It seems strange to quote Satan on this point, but—“ye shall be as gods…”—full partakers of the Divine nature.

No one can make that peace for you. Realizing true peace with God is not something you can have by listening to others talk about it, or watching other people do. Congregating isn’t enough and memorizing rules is not enough. You must hear the terms, weigh them, and accept them without reservation.

On Judgment Day it will not matter what others have said or done to you. It won’t matter how hard you tried or how close you came to perfection. It will not even matter how much God loves you.

What does matter is that you met Christ on his terms and accepted, of your own free will, the peace treaty he offered.

Maranatha

The Colonel #93 The Pot and The Kettle

This week one of BLM’s leaders “allegedly” used funds donated to the organization to purchase a 6 million mansion and was called out on it by a reporter from The New York Magazine. The immediate, kneejerk reaction? Racism!

That the reporter also happened to be black is inconsequential, it’s not really about color, it’s about thought and the control thereof. It is racist to break with the agreed-upon line of thought, even if you are black, if that thought is contrary to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the social agenda founded on it.

Economists like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have been ostracized for their constant pointing to the numbers and the science of economics that deny minorities are worse off economically because of white oppression. That educated black men like Sowell and Williams place the fault for current social conditions at the feet of the black community cannot be anything but racist.

BLM readily admits that they are not about improving the conditions in predominately black neighborhoods and opting instead for working for some vague notion of social justice. No sense in getting to the root of the problem—no headlines there.

Of course, not being woke, I fall for numbers that tell how fatherless homes produce children in trouble, prolonged adolescence produces a sense of entitlement, and finger-pointing worldviews like CRT produce a built-in incentive, if not to fail, then to kill all sense of personal responsibility that is needed to succeed.

I am also foolish enough to think this is not a black problem, a brown problem, a red problem, or a white problem. It is a problem with human thinking. People of all races, times, and places are too quick to seek the path of least resistance. This too human tendency inspires tyrants, dictators, and megalomaniacs to give us an enemy to hate and blame while we surrender responsibility for our lives for their promise of security.

Make no mistake about it groups like BLM, the KKK, La Raza, the PLO, and any other race/political based movements' first and foremost duty is to advance their ideology, not the people they claim to represent. Hypocrisy is color blind even if we are not.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Know Jack #342 It’s the Law

“The acceleration of an object depends upon two variables – the net force acting on the object and the mass of the object.”

Isaac Newton

Math and physics aren’t my thing. I did well in both while in college, but…

So, I’m not going to try and explain Newton, at least not in a proper context, because I’m here to talk about writing and selling books. I’m pretty sure that Sir Isaac didn’t have authors in mind when the apple dropped on his head loosing a flood of insight into the way the universe works.

Be that as it may, Newton has important truth to share with writers about accelerating their work—at least as far as sales are concerned. I’m going to take his two variables mentioned here in reverse order, because writers hardly ever do things the way everybody else does.

The acceleration of your book to the coveted bestseller list is determined by the mass of your book. That is, the quality of your writing. Aunt Phoebe may buy your book because you’re her favorite nephew, but no one else is going to. The average self-published book sells about 50-60 copies—mostly to friends and family. The quality of the writing, or the lack thereof, is generally the reason why.

I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but it was your high school English teacher’s job to encourage you to write. Just saying… Of course, that doesn’t mean they were lying to you. If you’ve read the blog and have come to Know Jack, then you know I believe writing is a gift people are born with. You also know that’s not good enough and going it alone is a bad idea. If your target is 50-60 book sales, you don’t need much more acceleration, you’re on target.

The mass of your book, to get anywhere, needs a net force to act upon it. The force, as all Star Wars fans know, is out there, moving in and around everything. It just needs to be focused to move your book. To bring the net force into motion, you must get its attention. Remember, there is no try.

The net force, as you might have surmised is made up of readers. The more attention you focus—the more readers’ eyes you draw—the greater the potential for action! Not everyone who sees your book will buy it or read it, but a small percentage will. It’s a crapshoot at best. One thing is certain, however, if they don’t know your book exists, they are not going to read it.

The net force must act upon the mass for acceleration to occur. When I was young, most of my cars had a standard transmission. That worked out well because I can’t count the number of times that I had to push-start them. In doing so I learned the more people you have pushing, the easier it was to get the car started. (I did have one that I only parked on a hill.)

Readers are the propellant that will launch your book. Reviewers will keep it flying. There is no such thing in writing as perpetual motion, constant force is necessary. Finding your ‘tribe” or your “people” is all the rage. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself gravitating to those friends who not only read your books but introduce you as their friend—the author.

Newton's words used here aren’t just a good idea, it’s the law.

Maranatha

Lost Crusader #130 This or That

“The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse…He relies on your extra dislike of one to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”

C.S. Lewis

Earth has two poles, but generally speaking, no one lives long on either of them. Life is somewhere in between. Views on everything from morality to politics, to childrearing, to the existence of God follow the same pattern. You don’t have to look far in our society to find polarization.

We sometimes find the same polarized type of battleground in the interpretation of scripture: faith or works, knowledge or experience, to partake or to abstain. None of these is ever truly presented in the scripture as a case of this or that. The truth lies in a moderate blending of the two, worked out in each Christian’s heart through the use of reason and experience.

The truth arrived at by this method is not ambiguous. The truth, as personified in Christ, is given to us as broad principles and worked into specifics through the partnership of the individual and the Holy Spirit as that relationship actively moves through life.

That is not to say that there are many truths, but rather that there are many ways to apply our understanding to one sound principle. Some of those applications may be closer to the spirit of the principle than others but rarely are any, thoughtfully arrived at, without merit.

The ministry of Jesus has been called “radical” by some. I agree but probably not in the way such people suppose. Jesus was radical because he rebuked the legalism of the rabbis and the Council as soundly as he rebuked the abandoning of the faith by publicans and sinners (he socialized with both groups by the way). As famously told in the matter of paying taxes to Caesar, it was not a matter of paying or not paying but paying the proper authority in the proper medium of exchange. That is, the things that belonged to Caesar to him, the things of God to Him.

Isn’t it ironic that the world which criticizes Christians for being too black and white in both thinking and practice, views the scripture in the same polarized fashion and so never honestly investigates its validity through experimentation? Well, maybe not. When you live in one extreme end of the spectrum, it’s very difficult to see the other side.

Of course, the world need not go so far afield as Christian thought to find a warning against extremism. The classical philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle will tell you the same thing.

Christians are admonished by scripture to work out the practical applications of salvation in such a manner that their moderation is known to all. However, in all honesty, moderation comes with maturity—and so few in modern society, Christian and non-Christian, aspire to maturity.

Maranatha

The Colonel #92 How Much is That Freedom in the Window?

“Whenever one object exerts force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.”

Isaac Newton

To the chagrin of many, Newton’s law of motion seems to apply equally well when speaking about people. Masked in the anonymity of social media, it is believed that one can say or do whatsoever one pleases without consequence. That, my friends, is not how freedom works.

There is not a single act of freedom that does not entail a price. Jesus cautioned his followers to weigh the cost of discipleship before casting their lot in with him. The amount of his teaching lost on today’s world is unfortunate.

I shoot my mouth off on this blog with regularity. Sometimes I do it on purpose just to elicit a response, other times that’s just me shooting my mouth off because I tend to do that. I never do it unprepared for what it might cost me to give voice to my opinions.

If I have a saving grace, (hey, there might be one) it is that I allow everyone else the same privilege—for the same price. There’s nothing free about freedom, but you need not go that far, you can stop with a simple, there’s nothing free.

Every act of freedom, every free choice we make connects to an equal force that would hinder our liberty. Freedom doesn’t only affect the person exercising it. It triggers those who disagree with or oppose that choice to adopt tacit consent or take up active opposition. Action and reaction, if you’ve used Facebook or Twitter, you know how that works.

I’m all for people expressing their opinions, even those I disagree with. I publish books for people expressing views opposed to mine—which costs me at times, but I am not opposed to paying the price for the freedom to publish what I will.

Just about every Memorial Day I take a walk through a military cemetery. I’ve yet to run upon a name I know. It doesn’t matter, I am equally indebted to every person lying there for paying the cost of my freedom. God forbid that I should hide the freedom they died for, or silence it to soothe the feelings of the ungrateful.

In growing numbers, Americans are setting aside their freedom—just another commodity that has grown too expensive. It is so much easier and cheaper to shut up, mask up, and put up with the lunatic fringe peddling a new normal on television and computer screens than to be called names.

There is no reason to stand on the outside looking in. Step inside, and take the mantle of freedom off the rack, and wrap it around you—just remember you have to pay for it on your way out the door.

Sic Semper Tyrannis