BLOG
Books I Am Reading & Writing
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY WRITING: I have begun writing the story that will serve as the first book in my Maalstrom Series. As yet untitled, the story shows how Earth colonists arrived on the alien planet Maalstrom and what happened to them when faced with the almost indescribable impact that the planet has their DNA. For readers of Maalstrom and its sequel, The Selk King, who are looking for the sci-fi element and an explanation of how the later mostly medieval society on Maalstrom evolved from the original Earth colonists, the story I am writing...
read moreMore Nonsensical English
There is a sorry tendency of English speakers to say “verbally” when they mean “orally”. It’s standard nomenclature in law school — among people who should know better — to refer to anything pronounced aloud as “verbal”. But anything written in a human language is by definition verbal. Oral, OTOH, means voiced aloud. So people should say “oral” instead of “verbal”. Similarly, people often write “insure” when they mean “ensure”. These words...
read moreNonsensical grammar
“The is a car of George’s.” Though grammatically correct, this makes no sense, We say “The car belongs to George” and we say “Give this car to George”, and “This car was from George”, and we even say “The house of George”, so why don’t we say “This is a car of George”? We don’t say “The house of the Rising Sun’s”, we say “The house of the rising sun.” We can also say “This is one of the cars of George.” So why...
read moreNew York publishers & the PC Cult
The latest news from the mega-corporate monopoly publishing houses in New York City is that they are now requiring a litmus test to be applied to all books they publish. This litmus test is straight from the PC Cult, demanding diversity, equity, and inclusion, which as all independent analysts realize means the exact opposite of what these terms denote, i.e., few whites, legal privileges for special ethnic interest groups, and exclusion of white males. These are applied to the characters of every novel and story. Villains — as has long...
read moreNegative people
Avoid negative people, the time-wasters, the doubters, those who want to drag you down to their level so they no longer feel inferior. This is what such people say when they learn you are starting an enterprise of your own: 1) it can’t be done 2) you can’t do it 3) it was beginner’s luck 4) you will fail next year 5) (to others) I helped him succeed 6) I taught him everything he knows 7) we grew up together, we’re old friends!
read moreThe Gender Divide
If women run an organization, they hasten to fill it with their female friends just as they rush to join any organization where women are in control. But if men run it, they swiftly put up blocks to keep other men out while admitting women because they may be potential mates. Women look for reasons to include others, they lower entry standards in every organization they dominate, admitting marginally qualified people, and erasing barriers and borders. Women look for reasons to include others. Men look for reasons to exclude others, especially...
read moreNonsensical phrases
Here are a few nonsensical phrases that I hope never to see again: “It’s just the right thing to do.” Or “That’s just who we are.” These phrases are a sanctuary for small minds, a refuge from having to think about things rather than just react. A favorite of certain power-mad professional politicians like Pelosi and Biden, these are actually nothing more than virtue-signaling, reducing complex sociological topics to cheap empty slogans, an expression of anti-intellectualism. Don’t use them. It’s like putting your...
read moreFixing Blame
Thank you Biden and Pelosi for helping us fix blame for Russia’s dispute with Ukraine: it’s all Trump’s fault! No, wait, it’s all Bush’s fault. No, wait, it’s all Reagan’s fault. No, wait, it’s all Nixon’s fault. . .
read moreMercedes Lackey’s
A Teaching Moment. Far from the madding crowd dost today’s Social Justice Warrior write, embraced by global conglomerates and their cellophane orcs. I recently encountered a novel-writing thread on Quora hosted by a “flaming liberal” by name of Mercedes Lackey. I had only the vaguest notion of who this person might be, since I do my best to avoid any writer endorsed by mainstream publishing, not only to preserve my sanity but to retain my ability to compose a coherent sentence, something that seems increasingly to escape the...
read moreBad Habits of Beginning Writers
(RE: latest on the Bubba saga, see below) In my years hosting a writers’ critique group, I found that beginning writers frequently made the same writing mistakes, over and over. These were not necessarily due to inability or illiteracy, but simply to bad habits, habits that could be fixed. Here’s a brief summary of what I encountered. Sentences all the same length. Readers are not machines, they need variety in input and, like many endeavors, writing is not a science, but an art. A writer must develop a feel for implementing...
read more