Palin and McCain: criminal charges

On any other playing field in the world, before you got up and accused a person of being a criminal, of committing a crime for which the penalty is life in prison or execution, you would need to have some tiny, microscopic shred of evidence. It's called "the burden of proof," and it lies on the shoulders of the prosecution.

However, it seems that in the American political arena, anyone could stand up on a podium and accuse someone running for, or already in, office, of a capital crime ... and about half the audience would agree and yell for a kangaroo court and a summary execution:

UPDATE: Radar reports that the Secret Service is investigating the potential threat against Barack Obama at a Sarah Palin rally:
The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/mccain-does-nothing-as-cr_n_132366.html

And it's getting racial:
The Washington Post has reported on a Palin rally in which the crowd turned on the media and hurled racial epithets at a sound man:
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/baratunde-thurston/silence-in-the-face-of-ha_b_132660.html(Apparently, the word used was the N-word, which we can't actually say anymore, thank gods; the whole sordid story is out there: go find it.)

But it's even dumber than racial:
In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed "treason!" during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.
"[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are 'air raiding villages and killing civilians,'" Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. "I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom."
Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled "treason!" loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.

And it's even worse than the "traitor" crack:
"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain's ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
"This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America," she said. "We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/05/ap-palins-ayers-attack-ra_n_132008.html?page=7

So, here we have Mr. Barack Obama: a presidential candidate (ie., one vote short of the White House ... because one vote is all ANYONE needs to take up residence in the office without any corners: with the rest of the country split 50/50, the poll even, here comes Redneck Joe Sixpack, towing his pregnant, barefoot wife and his 14 children, to cast the deciding vote)...

Here we have our presidential candidate who, by January, could very easily have the fate of the world under his thumb. He could nuke the planet Earth until it glowed in the dark, if he wanted to. The power of the US President to decide if this planet and its six billion inhabitants will even survive into 2010, is awe inspiring. Armageddon is never more than whisker away.

So, here we have this man, Mr. Obama, whom (just) over half of the population of the United States considers to be sane, rational, reasonable, honorable, trustworthy, truthful and decent enough to be given command of The Button which destroys any future this planet has.

And for some reason, within the United States of America, it is LEGAL to accuse him of capital crimes.

Is there no law against slander in America? Is there no law against libel? Defamation?

People who accuse others of perpetrating capital crimes, such as terrorism and treason, are allowed to make these accusations without evidence, in America?

Then, anyone could stand up on a podium, draped in an American flag, and say, "Sarah Palin was a prostitute until she was 22 years old, I had her *ss every Friday and Saturday nights for over two years." Or, they could say, "John McCain is a pedophile!"

Or they could simply say, "Palin and McCain are criminals!"

And in the actual FACT of the law, the very letter of the law ... Palin and McCain most certainly are criminals. At the very least, they are guilty of slander, libel and defamation -- these are crimes. They have accused a man of being a terrorist and a traitor to his nation.

They have one defence in a court of law: they can present the evidence.

If it were any other country in the world, they would be charged with these crimes, hauled into court and forced to either produce the evidence to back up what they're saying ... or else they would have to back down, pay massive fines and court costs.

Go do a Google search, right now -- go on! -- search on "obama terrorist evidence" and see what comes up. Or, let me save you the time. NOTHING comes up. There is no evidence out there, just people saying things like this (and this is the whole quote, nothing missing):

This is evidence that Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist! We can't let a muslim terrorist into the whitehouse! If we don't get him arrested and put in Guantanemo Bay for actions against the United States, then something is seriously wrong with this once great nation! Who agrees with me? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080610204144AAOater

Reiteration is not proof. The color of a man's skin is not evidence of a crime. Nor is his sexual preference, his name, nor his family history. But in recent weeks America has been seething with allegations that anyone with a name like Barack Hussein Obama has to be a terrorist, because his name says so. Not to mention he's (shhh!) not white.

If you think Palin and McCain were the first to spout this piffle, and that they're not speaking on behalf of at least some of the American voting public, you need to see this:



That's been up for weeks, and if you want a real scare, this is just one of the many, many text responses to the video:

Obama is an active terrorist in Africa, no mincing of words, no stretching. He associates with terrorists in the US and worldwide... he admits it, your denials are absurd. This is not about race per se, but only fools would discount that he is a radical Caucasian Arab mix. The matter of Obama goes beyond whether or not he would make a bad President, that is a given... the question is, why is he even running when he has refused to provide a birth certificate and he hasn't proved his citizenship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm8z3XFWzTU&feature=related

So, where's the evidence? Where's the proof? Allegation without proof is slander, libel, defamation. America, where is your legal system when the world needs it for our protection, if not yours?! Libelists are supposed to be hauled into court! Go haul 'em in!

That's the way a fair legal system is supposed to work; but apparently it doesn't work this way in America ... at least so long as you confine your accusations of terrorism, treason ... and by extension anything else you might fancy accusing him of; wife beating, incest, molesting kids, owning kidporn; how about old fashioned murder? ... to White House candidates.

Where would the law draw the line?

This is an extremely good question, because terrorism and treason are capital crimes. You're due for execution for these two -- same as murder -- whereas the other crimes will "only" score you a looooong time in prison, and a lifelong police record if and when you come out.

Where is the justice in a system that allows people to whip up the old thunderbolt of racial hatred and then hurl it at the man who will probably, in a couple of months, be the most powerful man in the world? It really only takes one vote (the aforementioned Redneck Joe, with the pregnant wife and the 14 kids) to decide an election ... which means (and grasp this firmly, folks) at any one time, a full 49.99999% of the American population could be convinced its president was a terrorist and traitor. One extra voter argued. The "criminal" was elected. Ye gods.

Add to this the racial hatred that is being generated by Palin and McCain, and you have a blueprint for disaster. How long before Obama is shot dead, like more than one American president before him? America has a history of dead presidents who were shot by someone, somewhere, who didn't like them ... automatic weapons are legal and easy to get.

If I were Obama, right now I would seriously be considering following in the retreating footsteps of Colin Powell (remember him?) who was going to take a crack at running for office, only to ... stand down and get out while he was still alive. (The story circulating down here at the time was that he had been warned, probably by the secret service, that he would be an assassination target and should quit while he was ahead. Not being a fool, he put the safety of his family, and himself, first, and bowed out.)

Remember, the secret service is, right now, investigating death threats made at a public rally. I put this to you: if some jerk is stupid enough to come out and say it in public, within range of the TV cameras, what are these people saying behind closed doors?!

But, wait a second. If Obama takes the sane road and says, "If you're going to shoot me, I'm leaving ... he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day" ... if he says that, we will almost certainly get an America with dangerous, raving lunatics in charge.

If you were reading this blog a couple of weeks ago, you'll recall that I wrote this:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/president-sarah-palin-commander-in.html
...President Sarah Pakin: Commander-in-chief at the End of Days.

If you haven't read it, read it now -- I don't have time to reiterate. Then read this:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/not-gay-think-youre-safe-wrong-jewish.html
Not gay? Think you're safe? Wrong. Jewish, pagan, Sarah Palin is hunting for your hide.

And if that's not enough to convince you these people are dangerous lunatics, read:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/palin-and-mccain-advocating-new-aids.html
Palin and McCain: advocating a new AIDS epidemic.

Right now, if you're an America voter there is an enormous question to be answered. Do you want, as president, someone who whips up racial hatred to win an argument? Someone who anticipates Armageddon with pleasure and embraces warfare and the "soldiers of God" ...? Do you want Dominionists in the White House?

If you don't know who and what Dominionists are, read these quick:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/7235393/the_crusaders/
and
http://rwor.org/a/033/dominionism-be-very-afraid.htm

And here's the real kicker. Mr. Obama will probably have more honor and righteousness than to walk away. (Discovering himself little more than a puppet who was probably going to be assassinated, Colin Powell had the sense to walk, which is no slur upon his honor. At the time, walking was sheer common sense.) He'll very likely win the election ... and more than likely get shot. Even if he manages to survive his term in office --

The Dominionists won't be going away any time soon. They'll still be there in 2012. Sarah Palin will run again, with four years of grooming to make her look more like a presidential candidate, and give her (or someone just like her) a pretty good shot at the White House.

Dominionists in the oval office. Think about it.

Trembling yet? You should be.

Movie trilogies: part three mayhem

If you look at anything long enough, patterns emerge from the background tapestry of Life. There was a day when Cro Magnons looked into the sky and saw constellations ... when people looked into their spent teacups and discovered they could read the leaves ... and out of this simple and logical progression came the pseudo-science of market analysis. Eight minutes later, your ancestors could have been forgiven for running back and forth "doing a Doctor Smith," bleating, "We're doomed, doomed," until someone whacked them upside the head with a handy two-by-four. (Incidentally, Garry Oldman was great in the part. Seriously, what an actor.)

So, if you look at the whole, wide, thrashing ocean of movies -- as a realm, you understand; not any specific movie -- for long enough, you start to see patterns.

Like... Hollywood loves trilogies. And ... Part One is almost always The Best. And ... all the Part Threes seem to go ballistic.

Don't get me wrong: I love an action movie. The big action sequences are fantastic, especially in this age of CGI, where anything is likely to happen, and probably will if nobody exercises a little artistic or editorial restraint. The days when plot elements had to make sense -- or at least obey the more mundane rules of physics, such as gravity and inertia -- are gone, and unmourned.

However, the average age of the normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill moviegoer is 14. Therefore, when movies are designed and executed to make a profit over their nine-figure budgets, they're targeted to ... tweaked for ... the fourteen year old, whose adolescent bum is the most usual form of bum found on any seat more or less in front of a big screen.

I've been asking myself if the average age of the audience might be the cause of Hollywood's current trend. I call it the "Top That! Syndrome." Basically, the symptoms are simple. No matter what you did in the previous movie, the next one has to out-do it.

So, Part One could afford to set up the characters, backstory some of them, expand on the screen presence of others -- with comprehensible dialog, and other qualities which are expendable in the future segments. This installment will still need massive effects and whacked-out action, because without these elements the film is going to bomb so badly, there won't even BE a second or third movie.

But Part Two is born under a cloud: it's a TTS baby, contracting Top That! Syndrome in utero. It has to be bigger, faster, wilder, funnier, bloodier ... and the audience will love it.

However, TTS has a phase where the patient will have a close encounter with disaster, a near-death encounter ... a phase that could easily be terminal, unless teams of specialists can drag it back from the brink, and resurrect it. And virtually all Part Threes come into the world teetering on the brink, because of Top That! Syndrome.

Some survive: Return of the King could only follow the book. Everything that could be done to top The Two Towers was done, but the framework for the material had been laid down decades before, so there were several pacing points, parts in the denouement where one could draw breath -- absolutely enforced scenes where the action had to stop!!

Most Part Threes are not allowed the benefit of these pivot points, where the characters stop running, shouting, shooting, fighting, crashing, whatever. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ... Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ... and even Revenge of the Sith is dangerously close to falling into the same category.

The entire movie has been converted to action sequence. All of it.

Surprise: I actually enjoyed these movies. You just have to get into the spirit of the mayhem, and there are times when I can. I also know that movies like Tomb of the Dragon Emperor were aimed, fair and square, at Mr. Average Moviegoer, age 14, complete with the popcorn, candy and acne, in the front row. These movies hit the bull's eye, and make a ton of money.

But (and some of you are going to be looking for a blunt instrument to throw at me for this) for myself, I far prefer The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Mummy, and old Fellowship of the Ring, the very first X-Men episode, and ... so on. Those where the action STOPPED occasionally; when people talked to each other, rather than yelling at one another over the roar of the oceans and engines and hurricanes.

By now, the news that Johnny Depp has signed for a Pirates of the Caribbean Part Four is old news. But I'll add my two cents' worth right here. Since they finished the original storyline, maybe they can go back to Square One, start over, and come up with a movie that has something more like the pace of Curse of the Black Pearl. Because ... I hate to think what will happen if the TTS is not arrested, retarded -- perhaps even cured. (Is it curable? One hopes so!)

The other bit of news that's old, now, is that Johnny has also signed to play Tonto in The Lone Ranger, against George Clooney. This will make interesting viewing! I wonder if they're going to do it 1950s twee (like the TV show), or if they'll have the nerve to tell the Old West like it was, historically ... dirt and fleas and racial discrimination and all. The movie could have a sting in its tail, if they do it right ... have George rescue Johnny from a lynch mob intent on murdering him for being born an Injun, for example... Hmmm.

Like the rest of the audience, I love action scenes; I'm just not wildly enthusiastic about having the whole movie converted to action. A nice blend would be preferable. Like ... Vertical Limit, and maybe even The Peacemaker, and Max Max, and Troy.

Lately, when I hear that there's going to be a trilogy spinning off a movie I really liked, I tend to groan quietly, because the probability is, the whole thing is eventually going to go haywire. It doesn't always happen. The Zorro movies haven't gone (yet) to a Part Three -- but Nostrakeeganus, he predicting they will. It'll be (!) Son of Zorro, in another five or ten years, when Antonio's and Catherine's celluloid kid is old enough to put on the mask. X-Men: The Last Stand was frenetic, but only borderline whacked out (it's main problem was, it was under-cooked: it should have been a half hour longer, with a great deal more in it ... but the developmental material was obviously ditched to push the action sequences closer together to get Mr. Average Moviegoer revved up in the front row. Damn).

Two of the current Hollywood franchises worry me -- because I liked them both. Iron Man is one of my favorite films, and to my mind, the best comic book movie yet done. The words "sequel" add "trilogy" have been uttered, and part of me is groaning.

The other franchise that worries me is already 66% of the way trough to the terminal phase of Top That! Syndrome ... Batman. The Dark Knight was furious, frenetic, full of comic violence and cartoon horror. Contrast it with the previous movie, Christian Bale's first outing as the Bat. The fact is, few people liked the first movie, Batman Begins (I was one of the few; I loved it ... it was realistic. Woah. So, naturally, audiences stayed away in droves and movie critics pounded it. Makes sense, right? The action sequences were in proportion, and stopped for long enough for characters to be constructed.)

Now, apply the symptoms of TTS to The Dark Knight ...! To Top That, what comes next? Oh ... dear.

Writing and publishing in a digital future

As a writer, I'm always fascinated by what other people "in the trade" are saying and doing; I keep an eye on what's being published, what reviewers are saying ... and what readers are saying. In fact, I'm a hell of a lot more interested in what readers say than anything reviewers might say ... and I don't intend this as any slur upon, or criticism of, reviewers! Like any performer, I must keep my "audience" happy, lest I find myself doing an actual job rather than striving to build a full-time writing career. And I never forget the line from that old song, "You can charm the critics and have nothing to eat, but slip on a banana peel -- the world's at your feet!" (From Make 'em Laugh, in Singing in the Rain.)

Writing fiction for a well-defined niche is an form of expression with mixed blessings. You'll always get sales, because a niche is created by its own aficionados ... but, being a niche, its members can be scattered far and wide -- so wide, in fact, that finding readers was a major problem in years gone by.

I've said it before, and I have no doubt I'll say it again many times: thank gods for the Internet! Apparently, 75,000 new people every single day are connecting. Think about it. A writer's and/or publisher's potential marketplace is increasing by 75,000 people ever 24 hours. If the law of averages can be trusted, 10% of them will be interested in gay themes and issues. 7,500 potential new Keegan readers every day. Maybe only 10% of them are readers ... it's still 750 potential new readers. Daily.

Now, the same one writer won't be able to connect with them all: this is the "greed mechanism" of hype, relentless advertising -- gods forbid I should get dragged into it -- through which bestsellers are created. But let's say there are 250 writers just like Keegan, working professionally, today, in the niche labeled GAY FICTION. (In fact, it's a hulluva lot less, but let's be generous and say there are 10 people trying to get in, for every one who's already in and selling). That's still three NEW potential readers for every one of us ... daily. And it won't take long to build a loyal readership, if the books on offer are well written, expertly edited, and beautifully packaged.

Oddly enough, one of the most gratifying things I've seen was the parameters on a Google search which found my website. Someone, somewhere, had searched on "mel keegan torrent." In other words, they were looking for a site which would stream Keegan novels alongside the rock'n'roll favorites and the big movies. Woah.

When you think about it, it's like a vote to put the Keegan books right up there alongside the major works of the last decade. I think I wore a silly grin for an hour after I saw that. (We check to see where visitors come from, and how they found us; Statcounter tells us which searches we "won" on the engines -- knowing this helps DreamCraft to structure pages to make us more easily found in future... sort of an on-going process of vigilance and self-correction.)

The Internet is not only changing everything, but it's doing it at lightspeed. Here's a quote from The 'Culture Wars', yes … but whose culture?, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=154 -- in ONLINE Opinion ...

... in Australia over the past two decades [there] has been an enormous and sustained increase in the production and availability of music, literature, art, film, video and other forms of creative expression. In classical music alone, there has been an unprecedented profusion of concerts ... The same goes for books. In Australia, there are more retail outlets than ever before. But even more significant in this supply and availability is the Internet and providers such as amazon.com. More than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its own top-selling 130,000 titles. In other words, the market for books that don’t ever get to appear in even the biggest Australian stores is far larger than the whole market for those that are in those retail outlets.

And a little later in the same feature, this point is elegantly made:

In an intriguing analysis by Chris Anderson in Wired Magazine, “The Long Tail” explores specifically just how the new digital revolution is really revolutionising culture. Internet delivery has made a good business out of what is unprofitable fare in movie theatres and video rental shops because it can aggregate dispersed audiences. In a world of what appeared to be scarcity, we now have a world of almost unlimited abundance.

Let me just engrave this statement onto a six-foot gong, put on my ear-protectors, and stand here whacking the gong with a massive mallet for a few minutes:



the market for books that don’t ever get to appear in even the biggest Australian stores is far larger than the whole market for those that are in those retail outlets.

The message to aspiring writers is loud -- yet far from clear. Writing for traditional publishers is a minefield where many years and many thousands of dollars can be invested in a handful of air, the contract that never happened, or (worse) the real, solid contract that paid out about two thousand dollars in total, after seventeen years' worth of working and hoping! It happens. Too often, to far too many talented writers.

On the other side of the argument you have the prospect of dealing direct with readers. You write, edit, proof, package and publish; you use Amazon.com, and/or Lulu.com, and/or Payloadz.com; you work your tail off to market your work and find your readers.

It can certainly be done; writers everywhere (myself included) are doing it. How much money are they making? It varies. You can log on one day and discover you made $500 overnight. You could also log on and discover you made only $50. It averages -- and it can average to a rather nice sum. Better than this:

An Australia Council report in 2003, Don’t give up your day job, found that the number of professional writers had tripled in 20 years and that one in four earned below the poverty line. The average income was $35,000 a year, but less than $5,000 came from writing. Doesn’t this suggest that they should change careers or get a serious job, like everyone else? http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=154 (from the same article as above).

Here's the brutal truth: you can be a paid writer, find a "proper" publisher, have your books shelved in "proper" stores, and earn $100 a week. Or you can write, publish and sell online and earn a lot more.

It comes down a very personal decision. Do you, the writer, want to enjoy the limelight -- do the book signings, have your physical books reviewed in the newspaper -- while you continue to work for a living? Or would you prefer to earn a lot more money, write (and edit, and proof, and market, and ship, and...!) full-time, although you're not going to be given the limelight?

You won't enjoy the limelight because there's still a stigma about online publishing (POD, vanity, self-publishing, whatever). There's some idea in the public mind, that a book published online is junk. And it's true, many of them are. Most of them are. And you have never seen anything like a really bad one!

But as I said a while ago in these pages, when professional writers, editors, artists and publishers get onto the new playing field of digital publishing, watch out.

It's happening right now, and the traditional publishers are running scared. I wrote a whole series of features on this topic not long ago; rather than reiterate, let me just give a link back to the post which indexed the whole suite:

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-series-read-it-in-order.html

For traditional publishers, the future is starting to look like a dark and scary place.

But many writers (Keegan among them) are starting to see glimmerings of a new Golden Age. It's a digital age, in which the reader can have paperbacks and hardcovers if s/he wants them (some people do -- and can afford them, which is a critical point utterly missed by many industry analysts), and you can also get the instant gratification solution of ebooks, in a day when the hardware to read those ebooks is getting more affordable: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/gay-stories-and-ebooks-big.html.

The bottom line is that more writers than ever before will be able to earn a decent living ... if they can handle the realities of the new game. And this Reality Check is going to smart, for some: to make the cut as a writer in this digital future, you'll have to be very, very good. Your writing will have to be technically excellent, your plots must give readers what they want (not what reviewers want -- there's a difference). Your editing must be superb. Your covers should be irresistible. Your asking price has to be attractive ... your marketing, inexhaustible, your drive to succeed at this game bordering on mania. Like the budding athlete, whom everyone thinks is nuts, until s/he comes home with the gold medal or the trophy, and signs the Nike sponsorship agreement.

For readers the future is looking even brighter. They'll have a hundred times more choice, at better prices than we've seen in thirty years; and they'll just need to be savvy enough to buy good books, from good writers. Reader are not dumb. Credit them with the taste, and the sense, to know what they like ... and how much they're prepared to pay for it. The market in a digital future will be much wider and more varied; readers will quickly adapt. In fact, they're adapting already, and enjoying the process...

Like me. I'm a reader as well as a writer ... and as I said the other day, I'm actually starting to give serious thought to getting (gasp!) a pocket pc. At $300, they're a whole lot more affordable than are the $25 paperbacks we're getting served up by bookstores in this country!

Customer satisfaction is what it's all about, and the reader is the ultimate bottom line. Please him and/or her, and they'll be back for your next book, and your next.

Now, this is the way to build a lifelong career. And if you'll excuse me -- I'll get right back to it. THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE is coming along just fine!

Ciao for now,
MK

The Rich and The Bonkers

Being an ordinary working stiff, I tend to think of earning a hundred grand a year as being pretty good, and if you can earn one-fifty, you're doing great. Certainly, the federal Aussie government considers A$150,000 p.a. as the lower threshold of the super-tax bracket -- in other words, tickle that line, you're counted as RICH downunder, and they start to tax the bejesus out of you.

Now, if this sounds sane to you ... if your idea of the Holy Grail is still a million bucks ... if (like ordinary mortals) you count your pennies to make the mortgage payment and the car payment and pay the $1,683.47 power bill that just got dropped in your mailbox ... then, there is something you need to see:

http://fora.tv/2008/06/26/Billionaires_and_Their_Impact_The_Envy_Economy

I can't embed this, because it's not sourced from YouTube, but I urge you to click on this link and spend a wee while on FORA TV. The way you view rich people will promptly change. You might advocate reality therapy for these people: make them live for six months on the age pension, or unemployment (remember the movie, Trading Places ...?), or maybe send them to live on the seventeeth floor of a tenement in Queens, with a factory job to keep the rent paid and groceries on the table.

You might even advocate cutting to the chase, just straitjacketing them and getting them into a nice, safe little rubber room, surrounded by mattress wallpaper, where a keeper comes by every couple of hours and gives them a sedative shot.

How I got to this video, on FORA, I can't even remember. I tend to follow threads, and can end up in astonishing places without much idea how I got there. But for some reason I set it to play, and in five minutes or so I was so gobsmacked, I wound up watching the whole thing. Sweat through the intro, with the moderator; get into the first speaker...



...Robert Frank, author of Richistan. Frank is a commentator on ... the rich. The megarich. The stinking rich. The people whose personal fortunes are around US$1.2b, and who don't think they're rich because they're not stuck up, arrogant, conceited bast-folks. Others who only have $100,000,000 and are so envious of those with more that the jealousy is wrecking their poor little lives. Those with multiple billions, whose lower lips are trembling because (whimper) they have to wait three years to have their custom-built, hand-crafted ocean liner delivered. Awwww, does diddums need a nice, fresh handkie there? Folks who're weeping bitterly because there's a waiting list for that new Ferrari.

And why is there a waiting list? Because there are so many bloody billionaires in the world now, that the top-end luxury goods manufacturers can no longer accommodate them:

The Century FoundationNew York, NY, Jun 26th, 2008: This year Forbes magazine listed 1,125 billionaires in the world, compared to 946 in 2007 and a measly 140 billionaires in 1986, the first year of the publication's ranking. Clearly, the ranks of the billionaire class have swelled.

It's not only their ranks that have swelled. Their heads have, too: sounds like a case of water on the brain, to me. One struggles to grasp this kind of thing; the $300,000,000 impulse purchase, for example ... while at the same time charities are begging for nickles and dimes to irrigate Africa, stop the spread of HIV, get the child prostitutes off the Bangkok streets, fix the climate before we all choke, reverse global warming, restock our fished-empty seas, save the scraps that remain of our rainforest, and so many endangered species ...

And here's a billionaire, grief stricken, aggravated, STRESSED OUT, because his custom design ocean liner won't be delivered for a few years.

Send for the straitjackets. Get these people into institutions, where they belong. Hire a bunch of hypnotherapists to deprogram them, same as the survivors of radical cults are deprogramed. Because these people need it.

They need to be brought back down to earth, hard and fast, and maybe have some home truths about poverty stencilled on their dense little brains. Facts such as Haitian families living on $1 per day, and 30,000 kids every day dying "as a result of extreme poverty." No one needs me to go into the details ... we're all agonizingly aware of what's going on in the world, and if you're in any doubts, go here:

http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/181

Outtake:
The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is 17 October.
Half the world's population, nearly three billion people, live on less than US$2 a day
Over 800 million people do not get enough food to meet their energy needs.
More than 840 million adults, of whom 538 million are women, are illiterate.
In developed countries more than 100 million people live below the poverty line, more than 5 million people are homeless and 37 million are jobless.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (ie a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined.

Did you read the last line there? The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (ie a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. They would be the aforementioned Diddums and his two best mates, who're crying on each other's shoulders because they can't have a new Ferrari right now, today, this morning; because the guy who owns the $300,000,000 house just doesn't want to sell it this very instant.

Nostrakeeganus, he predicting a new boom indstry. Straitjackets. Because if these people are not "the first up against the wall when the revolution comes," it can only be because certain compassionate people got in fast, rescued them and got them safely locked up before the mob could get to them.

Sorry, folks: I know I'm back on the soapbox, but this one seemed to need someone, somewhere, to stand on it for a while!

Cheers, MK.

California marriage rights: gays and dinks don't count?!! Can we say "Human Rights Violation" --??

California wedding bells won't be ringing out for gay couples if Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has anything to say about it; the problem is, boat loads of straight couples ought to find themselves in the same stew ... and if the law is going to be bent out of shape to keep heteros OUT of the stewpot, you've got a nice little human rights violation on your hands here. Marriage is a no-no for gays, Morse insists ... and in the same breath she assigns thousands of straights to, uh, living in sin!

Intrigued? Read on!

Firstly, I can hear the majority of people asking, "Who the hell is Jennifer Roback Morse, and who does she think she is, to tell me what I can, and can't, do with my life?"

Since that's an excellent question, we'll go there first. This is the entity in question:

The short answer is, she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate. The long answer is, she's she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate and a big following, and a loud voice in the Christain community, who's never slow to come out fighting on the battlefield of what's being called the Culture Wars. Oh...kay. Next question would have to be, "What the bloody hell are the Culture Wars, and why should I care?"

All right, let's hit Wikipedia for this one: "The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting values. The term frequently implies a conflict between values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then." Unquote. Omigods.

(There's a hell of lot more to it, of course; if you're interested, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war ... but if you've already heard enough, stay with me -- especially since Wikipedia has red flags up all over the aforelinked article, flags which say flat-out "The neutrality of this article is disputed, and other warnings about unverified claims." Cute.)

If you want to read some baffling and infuriating stuff, get onto Morse's blog, where she's posting piffle like this, from equally soft-headed contributors:

Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality:
Research Provides Significant Evidence
by Trayce Hansen, Ph.D.

Notice, there's another bloody PhD. contributing to this archive of twaddle. Hansen is "a licensed clinical psychologist" (good grief, you mean there are unlicensed ones?!!) who, doctorate and all, has missed the point. Her beef with gay marriage rights runs along these greasy tracks:

"Certainly homosexual couples can be just as loving as heterosexual couples, but children require more than love. They need the distinctive qualities and the complementary natures of a male and female parent.

The accumulated wisdom of over 2,000 years has concluded that the ideal marital and parental configuration is composed of one man and one woman. Arrogantly disregarding such time-tested wisdom, and using children as guinea pigs in a radical experiment, is risky at best, and cataclysmic at worst.

Same-sex marriage definitely isn’t in the best interest of children. And although we empathize with those homosexuals who long to be married and parent children, we mustn’t allow our compassion for them to trump our compassion for children. In a contest between the desires of some homosexuals and the needs of all children, we can’t allow the children to lose."
[Source: http://www.drtraycehansen.com/Pages/writings_samesex.html

...and having read that, it's no surprise to find such a major point-misser as Hansen amplifying the twaddle written and performed by Dr. Morse. The two of them are bookends, at least in ideology; it makes sense for them to be found propping up the same redundantly point-missing argument.

Here's Morse's "Mission Statement," quoted right off her page:

Timeless values are the core of prosperity for business, families and society. The Culture Wars are bad for business. The attacks on timeless values— including marriage, the two-parent family and religion—increase costs, undermine productivity and demoralize your work force. As your Coach for the Culture Wars, Dr. Morse is prepared to defend against these attacks. Using economics, statistics and history, Dr. Morse will help you take ground and avoid losses in the Culture Wars.
[Source: http://www.jennifer-roback-morse.com/]

Both these people fall neatly into the category of "There you are, you see, you can be an idiot and still get a PhD, and when they have to call you "doctor," you can recite piffle and be listened to."

Holding a PhD is no guarantee against being dead wrong ... and missing the point, big time. The gist of Morse's protests against gay marriage rights, ably backed up by Hansen, is this little snippet, from KFWB NEWS 980:

LOS ANGELES - Advocates and opponents of gay marriage clashed Thursday at the only public hearing on a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage.
The focus of the hearing by state lawmakers was Proposition 8, a measure on the Nov. 4 ballot backed by a coalition of religious groups and the California Republican Party.

Opponents include gay rights advocates, the American Civil Liberties Union, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw.

Among the first speakers was Jennifer Roback Morse, former president of a pro-family organization, who said same-sex marriages violate the "child-centered institution of marriage."

"Mothers and fathers are not interchangeable," she said.
[Source: http://www.kfwb.com/pages/3071653.php?contentType=4&contentId=2840070]

Duh. Who ever said they were? Who would WANT them to be?

And since when did gay marriage rights pivot around children? The vast majority of gay couples don't have them ... and probably (if they told you the absolute and politically uncorrect truth), don't want them -- a quality they share with many, many heterosexual couples known commonly as DINKS.

Double income, no kids. No desire for kids. Have panic attacks at the mere thought of the wildest possibility of even running the risk of having kids, where did I put the condoms, for godsakes, I'll get dizzy again if we've run out, Jim, run to the store quick, before they close!!

Marriage is not ONLY about children. It's about FAMILY. And family is not ONLY about procreation. "Family" (look it up) can certainly mean kids, parents, babies, blood-ties, the whole kaboodle; but it also means: "a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/family). The key word there is including. In legal jargon they would say, "including but not limited to."

Family is about people meeting, sharing love and affection, becoming joined at the hip, and mutually dependent, being there for each other, sharing the intimacy of spouses, wanting to spend what remains of life with each other. That's family: gay couples and dink couples are equally well described by this definition.

There's no difference. They don't want kids. They just want to be espoused and live happy lives. Children are no part of this equation, any more than they're a part of the plans of hetero couples who marry later in life. Fall romances leading to wedding bells at age 65 or 70 certainly are not going to involve baby carriages and painting the back bedroom pale blue or pink.

So, if these air-head PhDs are right in their 'child centric marriage' ideology, ALL people who do not conform to the rule of what is permissible as a model for (Christian?) marriage, should not be granted the privilege of marriage. Not just some people who don't conform. All. Otherwise you've opened the door to simple, old fashioned discrimination.

If Morse and Hansen and their groupies -- who will be coming out of the woodwork in increasing numbers as the Californian ballot approaches -- are right in their beliefs ... and if we are going to avoid discrimination ... then dink couples should not be allowed to marry, since marriage is an institution designed for raising children, not qualifying for tax cuts and medical benefits! For the same reasons, nor should couples be allowed to marry where the woman is past reasonable child-bearing or adopting age. We'd have to put a "cut off line" on it. Say, somewhat arbitrarily, 65. Menopause is long over, but with hormones and IVF, a baby could happen (and you can always legally adopt -- if the authorities let you; they may not, if you're past retirement) ... even if the mother would be 86 by the time this hypothetical offspring is old enough to walk into a bar and buy a beer.

And if the California Supreme Court doesn't catch the dink couples and the older couples in the same net they used to catch same-sex couples ... I foresee acres of litigation. Square miles of it, in fact. A fecund vale of litigation the size of the Amazon rainforest. Because discrimination is one of the things nobody will tolerate in this day and age.

Or, at least, we say we don't tolerate discrimination.

Time for the people of California to speak with their voting powers. It's not gay rights on the line here. It's human rights. Scratch the surface of the argument made by Morse, and you'll find religion. Bible-babble is right there, confusing the issue yet again. She says in her mission statement, "The attacks on timeless values — including marriage, the two-parent family and religion — increase costs, undermine productivity and demoralize your work force." And the very statistics Morse loves so much say, this is dead wrong. Gays (and dinks) are over achievers. They make more money, spend more readily, and help to support the economic environment. And I can certainly see how it costs the country in dollars and cents, when people wake up and quit the religion habit!

Okay, nuff said: Keegan is now formally hopping down off the soapbox!

Gay stories and ebooks ... big possibilities for both

As we launch the advertising for the Keegan list which I spoke about yesterday, we're looking at the the whole landscape of indie publishing with fresh eyes -- or at least old eyes aimed in new angles, seeing new things.

Gay books are a fascinating niche in so many ways. Any other genre you can think of is restrictive -- SF will always be SF, historical will always be historical, and so on. But "gay stories" as a genre ...? Let your imagination off the leash.

Adventure? Sure. Talking heads? Fine. Fantasy? Great. "Hard" SF? Terrific. Historical? You bet. Mystery? Mmm. Crime story? Oh, yeah. Thriller? Ancient Greece? Cops and robbers? Martian colony? World War I, or Vietnam? Boy Band luv story? Drugs'n'sex'n'rock'n'roll? 1930s Berlin? Russian Mafia? Doctors and Nurses? Cowboys? Towtruck war? Courtroom battle?

In fact, "Gay stories" is the only genre I can think of that is not really a genre. ANY plot can be shoved into this one niche if it satisfies the basic criteria: does it have some gay characters? Do they do and say gay things? Does the story tackle gay issues or themes in a positive way?

Given three "yes" answers, the writer is let off the leash, and a good time should be had by all. Now, publishing the material is another question entirely, but opportunities galore are springing up these days, for writers and publishers alike.

With retail under the economic kosh worldwide (poor sales figures, no matter what you're selling, apparently; it could be cars, cameras or carrots, and people everywhere are bemoaning the state of the retail environment), ebooks might be the answer to a prayer.

I've had a love-hate relationship with this beast, the life form known as the ebook, for yonks. The major problem I had with them was the price of the readers: $1,000, here in Australia, for a hand-held gadget that puts reading in your hands, the same as a 10c photocopy (yes, yes, I hear the arguments, I know them all). But, seriously, a thousand bucks for an ebook reader?!!

However, things are changing, and they're changing fast.

On a whim, I took a look around the other day, and ended up on eBay.

These guys, by HP, are changing hands for a couple of hundred ... which makes a difference. A couple of hundred is doable, while you'd have to put a thousand dollar item so firmly on the back burner, it'd probably stay there.

For a couple of hundred bucks, all you'd get at an Aussie bookstore would be about right normal-size pocket-edition paperbacks, or six, maybe seven trade size paperbacks, or five, maybe four hardcovers. Otherwise, get thee to a used book store and hope they have what you want in stock.

At a good ebook store, though, you could get anything up to 20 or even 25 novels by writers like Bear, Sheffield, Silverberg and Gerrold ... not to mention a grab-bag of new writers who deserve to be given a go, but are never going to get one if it's left up to the bookstores who subsist on bestsellers.

Hmmm. I fid myself looking at these gadgets much, much more seriously now.

Which means that I (like rapidly growing numbers of other readers, not to mention writers) are looking at ebooks with a lot less skepticism. Till recently, I really haven't had a use for ebooks. I like to curl up with a BOOK -- and I suspect I always will.

However, if I can get a Greg Bear or an Arthur C. Clarke for $6 apiece, I can always curl up with a doohickie. In other words, the doohickie is starting to look attractive ... and I'm looking at PDFs with more interest.

Speaking of PDFs, for the publishers (or wannabe entrepreneurs) among you, it's well worth taking a look at this:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/adsforpdf

Thanks to "The Blue Suit Team" for commenting on one of my posts a few days ago, where I spoke of POD as "megatrend," something I really do see happening.

Indie publishers and writers, imagine this: you've zipped your material into PDF form; it's going out there as an ezine or anthology, in which you might even have sold some ad space already. How's about keyword-contextual ads by Yahoo, popping up when a reader clicks on an ad in your PDF? "Ads for PDF" is a free program, and as I said, well worth a look.

It's probably not the kind of thing you'd want to option if you were publishing a single work (a novel or novella) where ads could quickly become intrusive ... the again, this potential for intrusion never stopped magazines like Analog, F&SF and Azimov's from shoving commercials into fairly short story. But if you were publishing a magazine-style anthology, why not? One is so accustomed to ads these days, readers certainly wouldn't object, and revenues earned by online ads might easily keep the price of ebooks down ... could even make the little fellows free, if readers understood why the damned ads are there. They're not there for fun, nor for the sheer beauty of them.

And now ... work is calling. THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE are waiting, with an end-October publication date looming rapidly closer. Good gods, it is the third already? My blog posts might become a little more brief in these next weeks, as the galleys occupy my time and attention: bear with me ... and trust me, the book will be worth the wait!

Cheers,
MK

It makes the world go round

Love? Sex? Food? Money? Music? Beer?

All those things could be said to make the globe spin, but if there's one thing that really does make it go around ... alack and alas, it's advertising.

Speaking purely personally, I've never liked advertising. It always seemed so intrusive. There you were, seated in your chair in front of the TV, age 11-and-a-half, lusting furiously over the hunk in the loin cloth ... Tarzan, on the tube at 6:30 every Saturday evening ... and every ten minutes some moron comes on, trying to sell you washing powder and spaghetti and toilet paper. Talk about a passion killer. A psychiatrist would probably diagnose my profound dislike of advertisements as an incurable case of telehunkus interruptus which may or may not be contagious.

So, when it comes to actually DOING the advertising, I've always been reluctant. Not that I'm commerciophobic or anything genuinely traumatic. I just don't like advertising intruding on my personal world -- and at the same time I'm about to foist it on others.

It's like loathing mushy peas with a passion beyond the bounds of mortal sanity, and then not only putting on your gumboots and physically wading in oozing great lakes of the things (god, what a thought; swap the gumboots for hip-waders -- quick), but grabbing a handy funnel and force-feeding them to other people.

The whole idea is a major turn-off ... and you probably noticed, my pages were the last bastions of ad-free space on the Internet! Eventually, even I gave in -- though not for the revenues raised by putting ads on the pages. Google pays less than a penny for a click on an ad on a gay-friendly page (five clicks gets you 3c ... cute). But when you have the ads pasted to your page, the googlebot comes visiting literally every day -- meaning, you get indexed pronto.

Okay, all right ... advertising makes the whole damned world spin on its axis, and nothing much of anything tends to succeed without it. God knows, they advertise Coke and McDonald's. They even advertised The Dark Knight. And chocolate. And if it were legal, you know they'd advertise performance-enhancing drugs, so ...

What the hey? Like the commercial says, just do it.

So ... we did. Or, we are, even as I write this. The advertising for the Keegan list has been in design for about a year and a half, and we've been "almost ready" to do it for about twelve months! We're, uh, there at last. There's a whole swag of little bitty ads, like the ones on this page; and they'll start appearing on blogs and other assorted pages right across the web, in the next couple of days. Time to get on with it, get this show on the road.

One might wish that good books sold themselves, but they don't. I was just saying, a few days ago, that bestsellers are not actually written; they're hyped into being. There are fantastic books languishing in slush piles, or in office drawers; there are wonderful books which were given a microscopic printrun twenty years ago, and haven't been heard from since -- and won't be heard from again, unless the author gets his/her finger out and organizes a small-circulation reprint -- because things are getting tough in retail, and new product can't take the competition from old stuff. Well, not front and center on the bookstore shelves, anyway.

So, without further ado: let's take this advertising thing for a spin and see what happens. Me? I'd love to give up the day job and write full time. I have at least 40 more novels to write, and at the rate I'm going, I'll finish the last one about the time they wheel me out the door feet first, in a box.

(People think you can work all day and write in your spare time -- nope. A day's toil dries up your creative juices; you're mentally too tired to write, even if you have the energy ... and if you do a hard job ...!) In the last few years I've been managing a book s year, and have been patting myself on the back for the effort. However -- I could write two. I could even write three. If the day job goes bye-bye.

So, for the last couple of weeks I've been helping DreamCraft to hammer out a campaign based around something called a "landing page." Makes sense. This is what folks land on, after clicking on an ad they saw on a page waaaaay out there, far far across the web. Now, I've never liked the whole concept of landing pages (because they exist to sell, sell, sell), but the web marketing gurus swear up and down they work.

Ours is a whole lot less obnoxious than the majority you'll see out there:

http://www.dream-craft.com/gay-stories/gay-books.html

And when the prospective customer has made the decision to investigate further and maybe buy a book, they click through from the above page to this one --

http://www.dream-craft.com/gay_books_keegan/gay_books.html

-- which is MK's One-Stop-Shop.

Oh...kay. We're online, everything looks good and seems to work just fine. This is the point where fresh eyeballs come in very handy, so I'm soliciting for a favor from readers! Can you click through to those pages and let me know what you think of them? Just quick impressions. You can leave a message here, or on the website, or even off the pages themselves. Your thoughts will be greatly valued.

And if you can't stand advertising, let me assure you, I'm in complete agreement, and have been since the age of 11, when some blithering idiot would come on the TV, drivelling on about utterly unimportant things, like food, and cars, and clothes, when Tarzan was supposed to be flexing his muscles all over the same screen between 6:30 and 7:30. (If you think I'm kidding, look to your left. I had hellaciously good taste when I was 11.)

However -- it's probably in your best interests if you bear with me about the commercialization, because if I get to write full time, there'll be a lot more novels on the Keegan list! And it comes down to the double-edged sword of advertising.

At last we're launching the campaign ... and here's hoping!

Cheers,
MK

Captain Jack, webpages, and hunks in harm's way

We're having all kinds of fun today. So much fun, we're thinking of hiring a marquee and throwing a garden party, and inviting y'all.

Not.

The "fun" is all about webpage design. Now, design work is relatively easy. Basically, you treat the monitor as a page, and fiddle with elements to achieve the same kind of harmonious balance as you would get on paper ... book covers are a perfect example. Making a full wraparound jacket work, much less the dustjacket for a hardcover, is not the easiest job in the world. Thank gods, Jade at DreamCraft has been doing this for over fifteen years now, and things like the below example just fall into place:

(I still smile when I see this cover, because the painting, "The Jungle Book" was done first -- it was the painting that made the whole story jump into my mind. The hunk turned into Sonny Moran, the tiger just was Indhira, the location was the Tarkine. My brain is weird. I know.)

The beauty of working on paper is, you know ahead of time what size it is. You tell the printer what size to print on, and upon pain of death s/he (or more likely a digital printing robot these days) does exactly what s/he (or it) is told.

Webpages are different. For a start, monitors come in all shapes and sizes, and are never the same color twice. What's pale butter on one screen will come up as the brightest shade of sickly yellow on another; and their brightness settings are such that you can never, predict how images are going to appear. Worse than this, there are so many moitor resolutions today that designing a common page, something which is going to look good on them all, is a job that's assumed the proportions of the the Labors of Hercules.

Right now, we're designing a raft of new pages for the MK OnLine site ... trying to make it easier to get through the jungle to the "point of sale" whatsit; trying to get as close as possible to "one click shopping." And it's not so easy.

The design itself is simple enough ... making it work well, and look good, on anything from a square screen laptop with a 1024 x 768 resolution, to one of the big widescreen doohickies, is something else.

We'd hoped to have the new pilot page up and testable today, but it's still not right. We might get it online later, or it could be tomorrow. Bear with us: we look forward to your feedback. We read everything and listen to criticisms with a completely flexible mind. You'd be surprised how often a design (especially in the fluid pixelic world of the web) has been changed along the lines of visitor comments.

So that's the thrilling work which has us all shackled to the desk today; and not surprisingly, in the midst of boredom and frustration, my mind is wandering...

Wandering back to the last episode of the latest season of Doctor Who (went to air here last Sunday, on ABC 1), which was deliciously crossed with Torchwood and a new show I know absolutely nothing about, but which seems to revolve around the inimical Miss Smith, her kid, the tin dog, and a supercomputer that sounds like a wine waiter.

It was very, very nice to see Captain Jack back: John Barrowman looking great, as always. One could have wished they had devoted more screen-time to the character, but the script called in so many guest stars, there's a limit to what can be given to any single character.

In the limited time he had available, Jack was very effective, and Cheers to all concerned for a great job. You really had to concentrate on this one, though; blink, and you'd lose the plot -- which makes me wonder how this show will go down with critics, esp. in the US, where the third segment of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy was apparently way to complex to be followed by the poor widdle dears viewing on the free critics' passes.

(Well, if you insist on continually running out of the cinema to take phonecalls, smoke, use the loo because you've drunk buckets of watery coke to wash down your wheelbarrow loads of popcorn ... you can expect to lose the plot of a complex movie; critics shouldn't blame a film for this. However, re: POTC3 ... they did!)

I haven't looked at reviews of the end of the latest DW season yet, but I suspect the less cerebrally gymnastic of the general media critics will be saying the end was incomprehensible -- NOT true. But you did have to know your Doctor Who inside out and upside down (they didn't stop for one second to explain who in the hell Davros is; did you notice that?) ... and you had to stay glued to the screen with both ears open.

Lastly, Americans and other non-British native speakers might have their work cut out for them, following the rapid-fire dialog which is delivered in regional accents -- David Tennant and Catherine Tate, both amazing (how they get their tonsils around that lot beats hell out of me), both very British, and both so fast, one is reminded of the line from Pirates of Penzance: "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard -- and if it is, it doesn't matter." Personally? I had no problem with the accents or dialog ... then again, I have almost as much family in the UK as I have in the US, am used to the dialect, and was prepared to give it benefit of my few remaining brain cells! I thoroughly enjoyed the show; and it looked to me like the actors themselves were having a blast.

Lastly, for today, since I haven't given an update on the progress of LORDS OF HARBENDANE for a week or more, it couldn't hurt to do that right now. The book is well along, and we're still looking at a release date of end-October, which is in good time for Christmas.

Galleys are being proofed at this time, and the cover is under design. The cover blurb has not been written yet, but I can give you the book in a semi-coherent nutshell: "Gorgeous Gay Hunks adventuring across a fantasy landscape, with battles, sword fights, horses, shamanic powers, savage tribes, barbarous enemies, a cast of thousands, some sizzling pages (!), a fully-detailed fantasy world which might astonish you, and a (gay) romantic streak at least foot wide." You know me by now!

We should have sample readings online in the next couple of weeks, and you'll be able to download a PDF right off the blog here. Later on, we'll do the full book launch on the blog, just as we did for AQUAMARINE. (Incidentally, many thanks to all who sent feedback on the new edition of that one. We labored long and hard on it, and the good work showed ... we hoped it would!)

And now, it's back to the grind: trying to figure out a way to make the same damned page design look good, and work properly, on screens, and resolutions, that are so different, it's like trying to design a cut of LORDS OF THE RINGS that'll look terrific on your Pocket PC. Oof.

If we do manage to get the new pages online today, I'll post again later -- a recruitment ad for test pilots. Till then (or till tomorrow),

Cheers,
MK