Curtis Edmonds's Blog, page 16

Debating the Real Issues

JIM LEHRER:  Good evening, and welcome to Hempstead, New York, for tonight’s town hall debate between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney.  As you know, tonight’s debate is sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. We are honored to be the guests of Hofstra University tonight.  We would also like to give a warm welcome to attendees of the Central Long Island Fantastical Fiction Convention.  As you know, CLIFF-CON had originally reserved this venue, but its members have been very gracious and have agreed to share the space for the evening.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Excuse me, Jim, could you repeat that last part again?

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: I don’t remember anything in the debate prep materials about another convention.

JIM LEHRER:  Pursuant to the agreed format, we will take pre-screened questions from the attendees.  First, we have Science Officer Phillip Weaver from the USS Stargazer with a question on science policy.

SCIENCE OFFICER WEAVER: Our space program is currently at a crossroads. The next President will have a number of difficult decisions to make. In your opinion, should scientific research be focused on developing dilithium crystal warp drive technology, or more efficient impulse drive nacelles?

OBAMA: Well, uh, let me first say, live long and prosper. [Applause.] Second, let me say that my administration has taken the lead in reforming NASA and refocusing its mission to achievable goals, in partnership with private industry. But our goal should be, and remains, a manned mission to Mars, and that involves more conventional propulsion at this time.

ROMNEY: Well, let me say, that like all Americans, I honor your service in… um… what kind of uniform is that?

LEHRER: That’s a Star Trek uniform, Governor Romney. From the original series, if I’m not mistaken.

ROMNEY: All right, then. When I was at Bain Capital, we did a lot of research on faster than light space travel, and it turns out that it’s just not economically feasible at this time. But there’s more we can do in space to open it up to tourism, and asteroid mining, and future scientific discovery.

LEHRER: Our next question is from Celestina Moleworth, a concerned parent.

MOLEWORTH: Thank you so much. And I am concerned. My daughter is in high school, and she wanted to start up a support group for her fellow students who are Hufflepuffs, and the principal turned her down, because there was already a wizarding organization on campus. Of course, that other organization is all Gryffindor children, and my daughter just felt so out of place.

LEHRER: You need to ask a question, please.

MOLEWORTH: I guess what I’m asking is, what can you do to prevent discrimination and bullying in education on the basis of magical affiliation?

ROMNEY: I am very sorry. I know you’re concerned for your daughter, and obviously everyone supports the importance of education. But you’ll have to forgive me, because I don’t understand why you’re upset.

OBAMA: I got this.

ROMNEY: You understood all that?

OBAMA: Harry Potter.

ROMNEY: Who is Harry Potter? [Boos.]

OBAMA: We are a great nation. And we’re a great nation because we all make an effort to understand each other, and work together to resolve our differences. I want to be the President who brings Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors together. [Applause.] And if you want to be a Slytherin in this country, or a Eagleclaw, you ought to be free to do that. [Boos.]

ROMNEY: I thought you had this.

OBAMA: Wait. Sorry. Just got a text from Sasha. She says it’s Ravenclaw. Sorry about that.

LEHRER: Let’s go to the next question, on health care policy, from Mr. Victor Peacewalker.

PEACEWALKER: In this country, we spend untold billions of dollars on cellular and genetic research, but not one penny of that goes to the study of midi-chlorians. [Boos.} The prequels are just as much canon as the original trilogy, and you all know it. [More boos.] If we can unlock the secret of midi-chlorians, we can harness the power of the Force.

ROMNEY: I’m sorry, but none of you people are making any kind of sense.

OBAMA: I don’t know how to answer that, sir, but may the Force be with you. [Applause.]

ROMNEY: Maybe we can go to the next question, Jim.

LEHRER: The next question is from a Ser Voros Spearsong.

SPEARSONG: Gentlemen. If you could choose to be the leader of one of the Great Houses of Westeros, which house would you choose to lead?

OBAMA: Westeros.

SPEARSONG: Yes, sir.

ROMNEY: From Game of Thrones, Mr. President.

OBAMA: I know that. I do. Michelle watches it. You understand, though, I’m the leader of the Free World. I don’t have that much time for television right now, all right? What I can tell you, though, is that I met Peter Dinklage at an event in Los Angeles recently. He’s a great actor, very talented. So I guess I would have to say the Lannister house. Is that right? [Applause.]

LEHRER: Governor Romney?

ROMNEY: I have a question for the President.

LEHRER: That’s not allowed under this format, Governor.

ROMNEY: I’m going to ask anyway. Mr. President, what do Lannisters always do?

LEHRER: Governor, I can’t let you do that.

ROMNEY: What do Lannisters always do, Mr. President?

OBAMA: Um, I don’t know. Incest?

ROMNEY: Lannisters always pay their debts! [Applause.] And that’s the trouble we have in this country, we keep accumulating debt that we have no way to pay off!

LEHRER: Governor Romney, you might try answering the question.

ROMNEY: I have an answer. I stand with House Targaryen. Our words are Fire and Blood. [Enthusiastic applause.] And on November 2nd, we will take back our country!

OBAMA: Jim, do something.

LEHRER: Governor, you might want to take a moment.

ROMNEY: We will take back what has been stolen from us, and destroy those who have wronged us!

LEHRER: And that concludes tonight’s debate. Thank you again to Hofstra University, CLIFF-CON, and the Commission on Presidential Debates.

OBAMA: I had Osama bin Laden killed, and it still isn’t enough. How come Bill Clinton never had to deal with crap like this? I ask you.

ROMNEY [shouting]: I am the blood of the dragon! [Wild applause and cheering.]

Gordon Ramsay Spends a Week In My Kitchen

Monday

It’s the beginning of another week, and I’m visiting a small restaurant in New Jersey, assuming I can find the bloody place.  I know they said it wasn’t on the high street, but this is ridiculous.  I had to stop and ask directions three times, and even when I got there I didn’t see any fucking signs outside.  It didn’t even look like a restaurant, more like somebody’s house.

The chef seemed like a nice enough fellow, but I couldn’t tell if he really had a passion for food other than eating it.  I asked for a menu, and if you can fucking believe it, he said they didn’t have a menu, just nightly specials.  I asked for the special, which turned out to be overcooked spaghetti in a pink vodka sauce with slices of pork tenderloin as a garnish.  Complete rubbish; not anywhere close to authentic Italian.  I’ve had better meals at a curry take-away in Glasgow.

Tuesday

I take a good look at the kitchen.  It’s in a disgusting state.  It takes me ten minutes to get a whisk out of the overcrowded utility drawer; it’s somehow wrapped itself around something that looks like a potato masher.  I check the refrigerator, and there’s a half-empty tin of Paul Newman spaghetti sauce left over from last night.  I’m completely gobsmacked.  How can you call yourself a fucking chef and not be able to make something as simple as spaghetti sauce?

There’s nobody around for dinner service again; I haven’t seen a single customer since I walked in the place.  The so-called “special” tonight is burritos with beans and rice.  I watch the chef make the dish, and he’s using canned refried beans.  Pathetic.  And who serves Italian and Mexican at the same restaurant?  The chef has no clue whatsoever.

Wednesday

I arrive early to see what preparation for lunch service is like.  As I walk in the restaurant, the chef is leaving.  He explains that the restaurant isn’t open for lunch service.  Unbelievable.  He has no idea how much money he is throwing away.  He claims to have a second job in Trenton, and says it’s all he can do to make his own lunch.  I ask to take a look at what he’s having for lunch, and it turns out to be a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich with pretzels and a Snapple.  I wouldn’t feed that to a bloody rodent.

I get started on a roasted squash soup, and go out into the town and try to get some bloody lunch customers.  None of them had even heard of the restaurant.  But they’re crazy about the soup.  We take in five hundred dollars.  For some reason, though, the chef isn’t impressed by this.

Thursday

I arrive at the restaurant, and the chef isn’t ready for dinner service.  Instead, he’s playing Madden 09.  Completely unacceptable.  I challenge him to come up with a menu for tonight, based on local, fresh food.  He goes to the farmer’s market and manages to put together a simple, hearty meal – spinach salad, T-bone steak with sautéed Portobello mushrooms, a baked potato, and a very rich chocolate cake with ice cream.  I’m bloody impressed for once, although I still wouldn’t let him within a hundred yards of one of my own restaurants.

Friday

I arrive for dinner service, but the chef is on his way out to dinner with his wife.  I can’t fucking believe it.  How can the restaurant not be open on Friday night?  It’s the biggest night of the week.  He says he always goes out for dinner with his wife on Friday night to some other restaurant.  What in bloody hell!

I just don’t understand.  I take a look at his books.  The poor bastard is mortgaged up to his eyeballs, and there haven’t been any customers coming through the door at all.  I just don’t see how this restaurant can be salvaged.

Saturday

It’s the night of the big re-launch.  I’ve invited some of the leading citizens of the town to come out.  The chef is nearly hysterical at the thought of having to cook for two hundred people.  After he calms down a bit, I try to walk him through what he needs to do to make this place a success.  But he’s not listening.  Instead, he walks around to the back of the restaurant, which turns out to be this amazing terrace – complete with a large grill and what he explains is a “smoker.”  We get a charcoal fire started in the smoker, and load it up with fifty pounds of beef brisket.  While the brisket is smoking, he makes baked beans in the slow-cooker and starts hamburgers, hot dogs and local corn on the cob on the grill.  At first, I’m convinced it’s going to be a fucking disaster.

But when the customers arrive, they can’t get enough of the authentic barbecue.  It turns out to be an absolutely brilliant idea.  I try to explain to the chef that this is how he ought to be operating his restaurant all the time instead of turning out uninspired Italian and Mexican specials.  You can get brisket and charcoal for pence, and then have fresh, local side dishes that really bring in the crowds.  It’s a strategy that could make this restaurant a going concern.

He stares at me for two whole minutes, not saying a bloody word.  And that’s when he tells me and the camera crew to get the fuck out and not come back.  Unbelievable.

Kubrick and Approaches to the Sublime

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it — believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more ‘just’ or ‘ordinate’ or ‘appropriate’ to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same. The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man

There was posted, not too long ago, an invitation at the PJ Media site for writers to speculate on which of Stanley Kubrick’s films were the greatest. There are two evident problems with doing this. One is that Kubrick’s films are, generally speaking, so very different;. Even the films that are kind of the same aren’t the same. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is very different than A.I., despite their sci-fi settings. PATHS OF GLORY and FULL METAL JACKET are very anti-military, but in starkly different ways. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is a very different horror movie than THE SHINING.

But the other problem is more central. Of all of Kubrick’s movies, none of them approach the sublime more frequently than DR. STRANGELOVE: OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. I am using “sublime” here the same way that Lewis did, and Coleridge did. The scenes in DR. STRANGELOVE that work–and that’s almost all of them–merit our approval and respect.

A lot of this has to be credited to the brilliance of Kubrick’s collaborators, notably co-screenwriter Terry Southern and primary star Peter Sellers. In this scene, Sellers delivers his version of the one-sided telephone conversation schtick made famous by Bob Newhart just a few years prior:

Note the balance here between the faux-calm that Sellers is trying to project here against the fiddling and fidgeting that George C. Scott is doing, as well as the perfect twist of the knife by Sellers right at the end of the clip.

Sellers’s meek President and stammering RAF officer have to carry the majority of the movie, counterbalanced against Scott’s hyperactive Air Force general. Scott wasn’t yet the legendary on-screen presence that he would later be; at this point, his biggest roles had been in THE HUSTLER and ANATOMY OF A MURDER. But he’s extremely charismatic and effective as an overconfident steely-eyed missile man:

But for me, the best parts of DR. STRANGELOVE are the contributions by the smaller characters, and that has to be credited to Kubrick. The performance everyone remembers is that of Slim Pickens as the pilot of one of the bomber planes. The fact is that Pickens wasn’t really that good of an actor. His other memorable roles came in BLAZING SADDLES, which was a knowing self-parody, and in 70′s TV dreck like B.J. AND THE BEAR, which I mention just to play this video:

But what’s easily the most magical scene in DR. STRANGELOVE is the brief appearance of Keenan Wynn, who probably appeared in more schlocky TV shows than anyone else, and who was the villain in one of the “Herbie” movies. Here, he gets the chance to out-deadpan Peter Sellers, of all people, and does it magnificently:

There shouldn’t be a debate about this, people. DR. STRANGELOVE is the best Kubrick movie. Period. You can tell C.S. Lewis I said so.

Smear Tactics

Hachette author Laura Miller, in Salon, irritated that many self-published authors support Amazon in the Amazon/Hachette fight, launches on a rant against the quality of self-pub books:

Yes, self-published authors also believe passionately in their own work, but as we’ve all had a chance to learn by now, even really bad writers are convinced that they are good writers. An author’s opinion of his own work is not much use. Self-published authors can hire freelance editors to comb their books for typos and grammatical mistakes, but when it comes to structural editing — telling the author the third quarter of a novel is too windy or insisting that the current ending needs to be tossed out entirely and redone, things no writer likes to hear but some writers need to — an editor-for-hire is much less motivated to displease her client even when demanding major rewrites would make for a better book.

I just have three quick things to say about this:

I hope to God that if I ever get a traditional publishing contract, I don’t say anything this mean and arrogant about anybody, much less self-publishers or freelance editors.
Is there bad writing in self-publishing? You betcha. Is there bad writing in traditional publishing? Also yes. Are there delusional people running around the entire industry? Of course there are. So why imply that all the delusion and bad writing is on the self-published side of the fence?
I can’t speak for anybody but myself, but I have absolutely used a developmental editor on both of my books, and I have found her services invaluable–and I have, on her advice, cut out windy or unhelpful chapters, and changed the endings of both books. And I’ve used proofreaders, too. It’s insulting to imply otherwise.

Having said that, I think Miller is right when she says that if Hachette and other traditional publishers have to cut prices, that self-publishers will have to cut prices even further. This is depressing. Life is depressing. And (to paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke) self-publishing, like life, is more depressing than anything except the known alternative. But that doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s OK to be rude to people, or to tar all self-publishers with the same brush.

The Wall

Here’s a quick question for you:

Why haven’t there been any Hollywood movies about the fall of the Berlin Wall? It’s one of the most iconic and photogenic events of the last century. You’d think there would have been twenty movies about it. There seem to have been a couple of German movies (including one farce where a family pretends the wall hasn’t fallen to console a dying family member), but nothing, you know, epic.

Why is that?

American, Idle

I am not saying much at the moment, mostly because I do not have much to say and it’s summertime and the living is easy. I just got back from a week and a half of vacation, where I did not write a word or even think about writing (outside from a slightly surreal editorial conference in the middle of Union Station in DC). I have kind of a satirical short story series in the works, and I have the general concept and a somewhat blurry outline of a new novel in the pipeline.

So, just some quick bits:

I am currently querying on WREATHED, which means I can’t say much about it, but I CAN say that my wife thought it was good, so there’s THAT.
If I find an agent (difficult but not impossible) and if the agent finds me a publisher (stop laughing, it could happen) I would guess that WREATHED will come out about this time next year. But that’s a guess.
If I don’t find an agent (likely enough given my track record) and I have to self-publish, I am thinking probably that WREATHED will come out sometime in November. Again, that’s a guess. I am planning a somewhat more elaborate roll-out for this one and will need time to make that happen.
I will probably do some sort of promotion for RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY in the next month or two, just to keep the pot stirring. Sales have been OK but unspectacular, and I’d like to goose the numbers a little bit. I am probably doing a 99 cent sale, as the last sale (at $2.99) did rather poorly.
WREATHED is decidedly NOT a sequel to RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY, but some of the characters in WREATHED are distantly related to RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. The next novel, if I write it, has a working title now called THE SPARE, and is about one of Will’s great-nephews by marriage. (This is unnecessarily confusing, and I apologize, but if you care I have a whole family tree that I’m working on.)

Country Music for the Next Generation

There’s an article at PJ Media, sparked by my friends at Liberty Island, which asks the question, “Who Are the Greatest Country Music Artists Everyone Should Have In Their Collection?” The subhead reads: “Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton? Who are the best?”

I have all the respect in the world for these people, but let’s get real. Johnny Cash is dead. Willie Nelson is in his eighties. Dolly Parton is Medicare-eligible. Are they country music legends of the highest order? Of course they are. But are they who we should be talking about?

I looked at the comments on the article (breaking my own rule of never looking at the comments). The people who read the article suggested people like Lester Flatt and Jimmie Rodgers. Someone suggested the Stoneman Family who were playing ninety years ago. Ninety years ago!

I am not saying we should not honor the greats of country music. Of course we should. I’ve got an iTunes player full of Johnny Cash and George Jones music. But I’ve also got two five-year-old daughters, and I live in by-God New Jersey, and I’m going to have a supremely hard time to convince them that country music is worth listening to.

I’m driving with them the other day, and they want to listen to the kids’ station on XM, and I turn it on, and for some reason known only to the Elder Ones, they’re playing “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, which is not what I’d classify as kid’s music, but whatever floats your boat. And they’re listening to it, and Child A starts complaining that the words of the song aren’t right.

“Those are the words,” I say. “Why wouldn’t they be right?”

And then, hand to God, she starts singing the chorus of the Katy Perry song, “Roar,” which, indeed, talks about the eye of the tiger.

That’s what I’m up against. And if you tell me that the best way to stop my kids from listening to Katy Perry and listening to country music is to get them hooked on the Stoneman Family, you’re wrong. I say that with the deepest respect, but you’re wrong and you need to maybe think about listening to something more current.

I was lucky, I guess. I grew up in the 70′s, bouncing around the North Texas prairie in my dad’s pickup, listening to all hundred thousand watts of WBAP in Fort Worth, with Paul Harvey on at noon, and listening to George Jones and Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. Add in some Kenny Rogers and Barbara Mandrell and you had yourself a well-rounded listening experience. But even then, country music was, objectively, kind of a hard sell. Take a look at this, if you dare.

If you didn’t click on the link, what you missed out on was Conway Twitty, on the old “Hee-Haw” show, singing what can only be described as a seduction ballad, while rocking an improbable toupee and mutton-chop sideburns, and wearing a pale-pink double-breasted polyester leisure suit and white cowboy boots. And he’s gently caressing the inside of his thigh. This was–and I say this very advisedly–considered to be perfectly normal at the time.

I want better than that for my kids.

So when they’re ready to start listening to country music, I’m going to break out three artists that I think they’ll like, and that are a good introduction to the genre:

1. Brad Paisley. Excellent musician, great sense of humor, and he’s got a firm connection to everything that makes country music great.

2. Kenny Chesney. I’m a much bigger fan of his earlier stuff than his island-laced later stuff, but the man knows how to put feeling and heart in a lyric.

3. George Strait. I know, he’s getting ready to retire, but nobody’s ever had a better career in country music, and I had to put a Texan on the list. When they’re older, and know a little better, I can start slipping some Robert Earl Keen and Lyle Lovett in the mix, and start throwing in some James McMurtry when they’re old enough.

Of course, by then, I’m hoping that the world will have changed a little, and that there’ll be new country music worth listening to, because there isn’t much of that being played on the radio right now. Eventually, times will change, tastes will change, and the focus will come back to tradition, the way it always does. Until then, you’re not getting my George Jones MP3s away from me without a fight.

A Trigger Warning, Just For You

Last year (as you probably know all too well), I wrote a novel called RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. If you’ve read the book, you probably know that it contains at least one very violent and disturbing scene, along with a few other scenes that are troubling. The book’s themes deal with suicide, abortion, and mental illness. The main character experiences the deaths of three of his children and one grandchild. It is a dark book, and I make no apologies for that.

So, therefore, I say this. If you have (just for example) endured the suicide of a loved one, and don’t wish to read a book that has suicide as a main theme, don’t read RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. I’m OK with that. If you want to read it, but feel you need a “trigger warning” before attempting it, well, this is that for you. The same thing goes for people who’ve experienced the loss of a child. If you have, you may find aspects of RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY to be disturbing and unsettling, and I understand that it may be difficult for you to read the book.

I will even go farther to say that if you have issues with personal betrayal, the depiction of abortion, the portrayal of mental illness, or a couple of other things I’m not even remembering, you are probably entitled to a trigger warning before reading RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY, and I am OK giving you one. I understand that there are certain people who have undergone trying circumstances in their lives that make exposure to certain story elements difficult.

Having said that, there is the Oberlin College statement about trigger warnings, noted today by Rich Lowry in National Review Online. You have to give whoever wrote this all the credit in the world for being, well, inclusive:

Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

I just don’t know, as an author, what you do with that. I am perfectly OK with the concept that people might have a reaction to a specific trauma in their past. But trigger warnings about this kind of thing are just beyond useless.

The focal point in my book is a wedding between a straight white woman and a straight white man, both of them reasonably well-to-do, with the woman being a scion of the WASP old-money elite. I would have to ask an Oberlin English major to be sure, but I think that sentence, in and of itself, pretty much qualifies my book for a trigger warning on all those grounds. (You have been warned.)

I am perfectly comfortable with the notion that, if someone some day decides to use my book in a classroom, with a student requesting to be warned about disturbing and troubling material. But the idea that a student would be so scarred by classism (whatever you interpret that actually meaning) that the student needs a trigger warning before reading a book about a high-class wedding is… well, the third most absurd thing in the document.

Anything could be a trigger — a smell, song, scene, phrase, place, person, and so on. Some triggers cannot be anticipated, but many can.

I look at that, as an author, and I just cringe. Just to pick one random spot, there’s a scene in RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY that takes place at the Atlanta airport. I will concede that the Atlanta airport is a zone of negative energy, and that all sorts of people have all sorts of different reactions when you talk about the Atlanta airport. But the very idea that I (or anyone else) is obliged to give a trigger warning to the reader that a given scene takes place at the Atlanta airport is utterly ridiculous. If you, personally, have had a bad experience at the Atlanta airport, and it was emotionally scarring for you, I apologize deeply, but it is not my job or anyone else’s to say, “Hey, at one point Will goes to the Atlanta airport, so you might want to steel yourself, because part of the book takes place at the Atlanta airport, and that might be an issue for anyone who’s had Delta lose their luggage, mmm-kay?” No.

And yet, that’s not the most absurd thing.

Remove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.

No. Please, no. Just stop. This is censorship, and even if it’s well-meaning goody-goody censorship, it still stinks. Stop.

Just to reiterate: I have no problem with the concept of the trigger warning as an accommodation for individuals who have experienced extreme trauma and are sensitive to certain issues. If that’s you, then God bless your heart. I do have a problem with people insisting that they deserve trigger warnings about every single possible thing in the universe that might upset their equilibrium, whether anyone realizes it or not.

I have been reading the Horatio Hornblower books, and there’s a scene, after a winning battle, where Captain Hornblower complains to his crew that he’s seen (trigger warning!) a crew of Afro-Portuguese sailors do a better job of trimming their sails. Except that he didn’t say that. He said what is politely referred to as “the n-word.” I read that, and I was startled for all of a second and a half. And then I kept reading, because I am not three years old and am therefore good with the concept that a Napoleonic-era British sailor might use that exact word. If you need a trigger warning to read Horatio Hornblower, I suggest that you should stick to Goodnight Moon.

Giveaway for DESIGN FOR HAPPINESS

I am doing a Goodreads giveaway for my grandfather’s book, DESIGN FOR HAPPINESS. Ten copies of the paperback are available for free through Goodreads. Feel free to enter and win.

A little about DESIGN FOR HAPPINESS – it was written in 1961 and had been out of print for years. It’s an examination of the psychological principles underlying the Sermon on the Mount, and makes a case for Jesus’s message being based in good sound psychology.

IF you’d prefer the e-book version, and would like to do a (very short) book review for Goodreads and Amazon, please contact me and I’ll hook you up. Or, you know, just buy it on Amazon. That’s still legal!

A Vade Mecum for Querying

Vade mecum, if you didn’t know, is Latin, and it means “go with me.” It was used then to describe something you carried around with you, like a hipster Moleskine notebook. This is not that, but it’s some of what I think are the most helpful links if you’re querying, which I am right now.

The Wiley Cash query letter is a great example of the form, and you could do worse than copying it.
The Hope Ramsay seven-paragraph synopsis is a great help for writing those pesky little suckers. (I say “suckers” because I don’t think “synopses” is the right word.)
The Chuck Wendig rejection piece. If you haven’t read it, you’re not a writer. Period.

If you’re a writer, a writer who writes, a writer who puts her work out there, you’re going to face rejection. It’s like saying, “Eventually you’re going to have to fistfight a bear,” except here it’s not one bear but a countless parade of bears, from Kodiaks to Koalas, all ready to go toe-to-toe with you.

Mount Gay Rum.
Blue Bell Ice Cream.

Other than that, I got nothing.