I have written a Science Fiction novel. I have (or will) post it on:
http://www.cox-internet.com/mastercraftsmon
The novel is an EXTREMELY political novel. Or so it seems to me.
I became very ill about March 20, 2003. Or so I suppose. Somewhere around May 19, 2003, I became irrational from a high fever and started seeing in my head a TV program about Green Sky, a mystic warrior. The program was very vivid. The story was ultimately interesting.
Some of my friends came by and took me off to the emergency room where I was diagnosed as schizophrenic. They put me on a drug that made even more ill. I went to two or three more doctors in emergency rooms with no help. A month passed and the perirectal abscess burst (the real problem) and I nearly died. I was in the hospital for ten days and four operations in four days. One of them was for a temporary colostomy.
Somewhere in the next six months I determined to write this book. I decided that I could not write about Green Sky. The guy was just too tough and callous. He came to do six things and as this story opens he has done five of them. He did not think he could do the sixth, retire and train up his replacement. I started in on The Dark Prince in the fall of 2003. I finished up about two weeks ago.
No sooner did I have the colostomy takedown in February, than I became irrational again. This time I spent four days in an insane asylum for observation. When my doctor who had dealt with the perirectal abscess returned from vacation, he diagnosed a fistula. Another operation. Since then I have been in good health, but it has caused me to re-evaluate what I want to do for the next 30 or so years.
Back in the dawn of the Internet there was the concept of 'shareware'. Instead of publishing a piece of software, a programmer would set it out on the net, people would download the software and pay the author if they thought the software was useful. I determined that I was not going to publish this book using the standard method. In fact, I determined that I wanted to do something different.
I hate my job. I'm a pretty good programmer. I could be making $50K or more easily. I just hate working in an office. I've been working from home on silly assed business research projects for the last few years. I extract data from two extremely stupid data bases and professors use the data to publish papers in scholarly journals where MAYBE five people read the paper. I no longer care to do that.
The Internet is for all practical purposes, infinite. Surely there are enough people out there that would like to read my book in order that I might make enough to live on. We shall see.
In addition to the novel there are commentaries and editorials. This blog will allow you to tell me what I have missed. As I said, to me this novel is a TV series or a made-for-television movie. I can see the foreground and background of the video as clear as day. BUT have I done a good enough job decribing the scenes for YOU to see them? You are the customer. An editor would impose HIS idea of what was proper a book. I am encouraging you to tell me what I have not made clear or where a factual error has been made or whatever. If I agree with you, I will change the book.
The book itself is one of the most insulting books I have ever seen. I wanted to comment on what I perceive as the shortcomings in modern American child rearing. I wanted to show what chaos looks like to a child and how it affects their perception of reality. Along the way, I insult Blacks, homosexuals, feminists, Mexicans, Colombians, Guatemalans, Japanese, the French (who cares), people who are wheel chair bound, people born severely deformed, the San Antonio Police Department, the CIA, the Texas school system, the Texas Child Welfare Department, foster parents of all shapes and sizes, jihadis, probably the Methodists, maybe the Presbyterians, most likely the Baptists (too much profanity, sex and the main character is involved in... dancing) and of course Liberals. One of the major goals of the book is to insult people of the Liberal-Left. The rest of the groups that are insulted along the way are unintended collateral damage. Live with it.
As Marion Michael Morrison said, "If you're going to insult someone, do it to their face." If you are easily insulted and feel the urge to whine about my insensitivity, too bad. You have been warned that the book depicts sexual situations, profanity and opinions that would in the normal course of events subject me to death threats and the massive disapproval of all Liberals. I will debate anyone on why I wrote the book the way I did. If you can logically convince me that I am mistaken, I might consider changing the book. No promises.
I consider myself to be a Classical Liberal. I believe in small government, low taxes, privitization of Social Security, service clubs taking care of social problems, capitalism, free trade, globalization and representative democracy. In the history of the world that makes me a radical, because central control has been the rule. The Left wants to go back to that paradigm of central control and I am against it. Of course to a Liberal all of the above makes me a fascist. What has always amused me is that most Liberals have no idea what the word 'fascist' means. As near as I can tell, the word 'fascist' to a Liberal means anyone that disagrees with a Liberal about anything and isn't willing to IMMEDIATELY change their opinion to sooth a Liberal's hurt feelings.
The setting for the book is Wideley, Maverick County, Texas. Wideley doesn't exist. I placed it on US 57, about 30 miles northeast of Eagle Pass on the Zavala County line. The imaginery town of Wideley has about 50000 people in it. The real Maverick County right now has about 36000 total. Waverley is another imaginery town in Zavala County about 10 miles east of Wideley, halfway between Wideley and La Pryor. I placed Wideley in Maverick County as a joke. Maverick was a TV series in the late 1950's and early 1960's. I find James Garner amusing. Thoughout the book, there are references to his acting roles.
Harlan Ellison wrote this LONG dunning letter to someone that owed him money. It took him hours to write the letter. At the end he became upset that he had wasted so much time on administrative details. He repackaged the letter as a short story and sold it to some magazine. That tale has been an inspiration to me for years. I'm now trying to implement his strategy of extracting the maximum amount of money for the same product.
The book is a method for me to make money. By writing this book and sharing it with you, I have done you a small service. If you are honorable, you will pay me some money for reading the book. Throughout the book, I have links to books I have read that are on sale on Amazon.com. If you buy a book through the link, I will get a small amount of money. As time passes, I will be selling advertising. As the spirit of Harlan moves me, I will try some other methods of honorably extracting money from readers. If you can think of some ways of raising money, please drop me an email. (Don't tell me about the t-shirts. They're in the works. Okay. The other paraphernalia will come later. First I have to get the book up and running.)
I have not finished uploading the book yet (as of August 24, 2004). I need to spellcheck the thing. I have broken it into chapters of about 300 lines of 78 characters. This used to be (in the Dawn of the Internet) the maximum size for an email. I have also set it at 300 lines so that I can make additions (fill in the background).
We shall see what happens.
