21 Saturday Sep 2019
Posted in Books For Sale
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You don’t get to see the whole thing yet – it’s kind of awesome. This is part of only a ROUGH concept:
If you could only see the rest…
Again, more about the book:
Getting there…
18 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in Books For Sale, Other Columns
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Made a major tech breakthrough today with The Substitute! Anything can be accomplished if one swears hard enough and long enough at a computer. How major is major? I (not you) can now read the beta version on my Kindle. This weekend, cover art unlike the crude thing over in the margin will take shape (I hope).
Get those card$ ready.
17 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in Books For Sale, Other Columns
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There’s much more to novel writing than I had imagined. Well, the writing is fine. The editing, formatting, etc. is a bear, especially with my (new) low-power computer. 400+pages makes for some awkwardness. I’ll make do for now. But! After The Substitute sells 10,000 or so copies, I’m upgrading to the fastest, most powerful thing I can find. Y’all can help with that. Thank$. – P
13 Friday Sep 2019
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Hey! Finally, an “original” article that doesn’t involve me merely adding sarcastic comments to a news story! This one’s about fiction.
Yes, friends, it’s been a little over a year since I first delved into the genre with a few discombobulated short stories. Now, we’re getting VERY CLOSE to my first novel, The Substitute. I trust you’re debit and credit cards are charged and ready.
It’s kind of funny. The book originally started out as a non-fiction work about how bad the schools are – because we just can’t have enough of those, right? But then, along came Mr. Tom Ironsides and literally hijacked my idea. It morphed into a dramatization overnight. Honestly, it has been a little more than I thought I was ready for. But, then again, it seems there is no perfect time to do these things. The reader may find the final product, while I hope entertaining, a little amateurish? Your judgment.
My saving grace was the guidance of Thomas Moore, author of A Fatal Mercy, etc. He said kind things like: “You’ve got a great voice. And, a good ear.” I said, “YEAH!” – like I knew (know) exactly what those terms mean…
I read several books on how to write a novel and I consulted some of the copious (dubious) material all over these internets. In the end, I’m amazed at how close my work is coming (unintentionally) to following the conventional format.
The outline and all the notes were originally geared towards a factual expose. A few short stories emerged, became chapters, and Ironsides took the thing and ran with it. Yet and still, it has three acts. There’s a hook in the first chapter. Those turns, challenges, and critical events magically showed up on their own. Climaxes – plural – fell into place without my realizing. Towards the end, there is a resolution of a kind. It’s not total. In fact, it can’t be, given the subject matter. Yet, I think it works and well.
So, when writing a novel, or anything really – do it. That’s about the best I can offer. My Afterword includes an appropriate quote from Clausewitz. That, and the rest will be along before long.
And, I have some more books in various states of preparation. If I discover anything worthwhile as those grow, I shall report it.
Okay, The Substitute: I’m thinking maybe $7-8 for Kindle and $16-18 for a high-grade paperback. In the event of decent interest, a hardcover isn’t out of the question ($35?).
Soon.
07 Saturday Sep 2019
Posted in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes
≈ Comments Off on The Case of the Undercover Fox
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A former CIA babe ruffles fake feathers with a new book.
A former CIA officer who says she spent years under deep cover has written what appears to be one of the most revealing memoirs ever put to paper by an American intelligence operative — a book so intriguing that Apple bought the television rights even before its October publication date.
But the book, “Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA,” by Amaryllis Fox, has become embroiled in dual controversies.
Some former CIA officers who have learned about its contents are questioning its veracity, saying key details don’t ring true. Some are casting doubt on the book’s climactic scene, Fox’s recounting of a dramatic solo meeting she says she had in Karachi, Pakistan, with al Qaeda-linked extremists.
And, in an extraordinary move, Fox submitted her memoir to publisher Knopf Doubleday without getting approval from the CIA’s Publication Review Board, in violation of the nondisclosure agreement every agency officer signs, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter. That agreement says the CIA must review anything a former officer writes about intelligence matters to insure that she is not revealing secrets or endangering lives.
Not to worry. I have reviewed this matter with Tom Ironsides. He said, referring to Fox as “Foxy A,” that there’s nothing dangerous in her book (and that any allegations of romantic liaisons with him are utterly false, unless otherwise). “A lot of lies were told. Some of them were even true,” he said. It seems not all things NCS are equal. “She learned to shoot at Peary. That’s so cute. Speaking of cute … she [REDACTED…..],” Ironsides added, pouring another Scotch.
Rest assured, the TeeVee (and movie) rights to the Ironsides saga will not be sold to Apple or any other mainstream outlet – barring substantial payment.*
*I’m open to the higher eight-figure range, guys, with some included editorial oversight. We’ll chat…
20 Thursday Jun 2019
Posted in Other Columns
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Two items:
1) The first Tom Ironsides novel (yes, novel, as in full-length book) has grown to around 120-125 (paperback) pages. It needs a ton of work and there’s probably another 200-ish pages to go. I’m getting there and having fun with it.
2) I recently debuted an additional set of characters in a different story set in the Ironsides universe. THIS ONE. I intentionally released it here and sent it to three reviewers. Two have responded. The first said it was excellent and left little doubt as to the evil nature of the subjects and their programs. The second, a very good fiction writer, was more nuanced: “Quite remarkable, disturbing,… well, it defies easy description” He later gave me the difficult description. He warned me about mixing genres, which I get and will work to smooth as that story develops towards bookhood. BUT! He said the style reminded him of H.P. Lovecraft. My first horror/Sci-fi bit was compared to Lovecraft. So, any day after I pass away, I should become a millionaire. Yay?
Thanks. More to come. P
10 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in News and Notes
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The end can’t be too far away for the world’s largest coffee, toy, and women’s magazine shop. Vox Day is right, as usual, about what this means to big publishers, book lovers, and B&N.
It’s just about all over for the major publishers now that Barnes & Noble has been acquired by a hedge fund:
Barnes & Noble Inc said on Friday it would be bought by hedge fund Elliott Management Corp for $475.8 million, marking the end of the once-dominant U.S. book retailer as a public company after years of falling sales.
Shares in the largest U.S. bookstore chain rose 11%, after ending up 30% on Thursday when reports of a potential deal surfaced.
Listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1993, Barnes & Noble has struggled to grow its business since the arrival of Amazon.com Inc turned the book sales market on its head. Even the company’s recent efforts to pull in a more tech-savvy audience with its Nook e-book reader failed to compete with Amazon’s Kindle and other tablets.
Elliot’s offer of $6.50 per share, represented a premium of about 42% to Wednesday’s close, the day before media reports of a potential transaction first surfaced. Barnes & Noble has been exploring options for a buyout since at least last October, with multiple parties showing interest including founder-chairman Leonard Riggio. Riggio acquired the flagship Barnes & Noble trade name in 1970s, nearly a century after Charles Barnes started the business in his Illinois home. Riggio grew the business, adding several retail stores across the country, but could not sustain the growth in a retail landscape dominated by Amazon.
In 2014, Barnes & Noble closed its New York Fifth Avenue store – once the world’s largest bookstore – and has faced declining sales for at least the last three years. As of this January, it ran 627 retail stores.
I very much doubt that Elliott Management has any interest whatsoever in building up a bookselling business. Instead, it’s going to methodically extract the most valuable pieces of the business, sell them off, and profit from the dismantling of the business. This means that the Big Five publishers will probably merge and reduce themselves to a Big Three, with at least two attempts to set up their own competitor to Amazon, both of which will fail, like Macmillan’s attempt to establish Pronoun, due to their structural inability to ignore the legacy requirements that inhibit their decision-making.
And, the book market is going to shrink further anyway. We’re now working on the second generation of complete illiterates, soon to move from “don’t read” to “can’t read.” Dark Ages 2.0.
08 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in News and Notes
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VP offers some shocking (if predictable) insight into the removal of books from institutions of higher “learning.”
The Great Enstupidation of the United States proceeds apace:
When Yale recently decided to relocate three-quarters of the books in its undergraduate library to create more study space, the students loudly protested. In a passionate op-ed in the Yale Daily News, one student accused the university librarian—who oversees 15 million books in Yale’s extensive library system—of failing to “understand the crucial relationship of books to education.” A sit-in, or rather a “browse-in,” was held in Bass Library to show the administration how college students still value the presence of books. Eventually the number of volumes that would remain was expanded, at the cost of reducing the number of proposed additional seats in a busy central location.
Little-noticed in this minor skirmish over the future of the library was a much bigger story about the changing relationship between college students and books. Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade.
Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves. The University of Virginia, one of our great public universities and an institution that openly shares detailed library circulation stats from the prior 20 years, is a good case study. College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago; last year, that number had shrunk to just 60,000.
One can make a very good case for outlawing so-called “higher education” now, as the Christian university created to educate young men has now devolved into a worse-than-useless factory for transforming young women into barren SJW debt-slaves.
This is a continuation of the trend from middle and high schools, in keeping with the general dumbing down. In some of those schools, what books are left are being caution-taped off to protect students from any random ideas.
Picture by me. I was not kidding, sadly.
27 Monday May 2019
Posted in News and Notes, Other Columns
≈ Comments Off on Summer Preview
A few things:
A new TPC column is in the hopper. It will covertly bring to light a project I’ve been working on, in addition to being excellent reading.
Several major projects have been underway and more are kicking off. More on that later.
The 7th anniversary of this “highly respected web log” is right around the corner.
A hot, busy summer awaits. Stay tuned.
23 Thursday May 2019
Posted in Other Columns
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I have just finished reading Richard Vedder’s Restoring the Promise. It’s good, spot-on in many places. Vedder is an economics professor so his take on academia is geared as such. Many, may charts and graphs, but most of the astoundingly worthwhile variety. He goes well beyond a purely financial analysis and he isn’t afraid of the tougher social issues. He essentially lays out two paths of redemption: the “conservative,” and the radical. Guess which one I favored?
More on this when I have time. There’s going to be a lot more, from me, on education.
Vedder.
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