December 13, 2011

Since I haven't yet plugged my books on DU3....

...please indulge me while I do so.



"Go To Hell" is a Young Adult novel of love, death, friendship, betrayal, fate, and board games. I wrote the first draft of this beast in a marathon 21-day creative push from my (now former) agent who wanted something to give a particular editor who was looking for a story about a "reformed bully." My agent read the first two pages and passed on it, but I pushed onward for another four drafts over the course of two years.

Having had no luck placing it, I decided to make it an experiment in Kindle publishing, eventually adding Nook and POD versions. The website for the book can be found at http://gotohellnovel.com



The title of this one should give you an idea of how hard it was to bring to this stage.

First written as Rumpled Trenchcoats and Rubber Bullets back in 2005, the book is the story of four boys who plan a mock Columbine-style shooting to get revenge on bullies, a dysfunctional school system, and their mundane lives. Everything is planned down to the last detail, so what could possibly go wrong? The answer to that question spreads out over the next 150 pages.

This novel is the book that Kunati (a publisher that used to brag about putting out controversial material) sat on for 11 months before passing. This is the book that an editor at a major New York-based publisher told me in a direct E-mail (bypassing my agent) "I want to buy this book, but I could never touch it with a ten foot pole." This is the book that got me, and eventually lost me, my agent.

As you can imagine, it's a story very dear to my heart. So after my agent burned every last bridge with all the major publishers with this book, six years and nine drafts after it started, I finally decided to bring it out.

This book's website is still being designed, but I do discuss it a little more (with links) at my blog: http://cnx.com/?p=1654

December 13, 2011

Dear John Dean:

Could you please make another comment about there being a "cancer on the Presidency?" If you do, maybe that will make Newt Gingrich drop out of the race.

December 12, 2011

How to Explain Gay Rights to an Idiot

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/how-gay-rights-is-nothing-like-legalizing-beastali

Illustrated outline of how gay marriage is not like wanting to marry a kid, a corpse, a dog, or a toaster.

December 12, 2011

A major flaw in the jury system.

The system as it's constituted right now makes it far too easy for a bully to go into a protected support group, alert incessantly, and have a potentially biased jury shut down discussions.

If this system is to work, then juries within support groups need to be constituted specifically and solely from those groups, and alerters need to be active members of those groups.

December 12, 2011

The bullies are out in force

Real discussion on the matter of who is to be host of this group is being shut down and blocked by the bullies who are already abusing the new jury system, alerting on posters they don't like and getting juries to ban them from the discussions.

This new system actually gives more power to the homophobes that we were trying to keep out of power.

This system cannot work, and this group is doomed.