Have I Written a Clunker???

I don’t know about other authors, but for me, there’s a huge difference between reading proofs and reading one of my books after it’s actually been printed up and published, and other people are expected to pay good money for it.

When I finally get my author’s copies of the book, I always open it with some sense of trepidation. Is it really any good? Will people like it? Or is it more like one of those awful books I review from time to time–full of clumsy writing, silly characters, dopey dialogue, and bogged down in an inane plot? It was with all these daunting questions in mind that I began to read The Fugitive Prince.

How many typos are going to be in it, that should have been corrected? How many pages full of nonsense have I perpetrated? With my mind so full of doubts, it takes me a while to get into the book.

The good news is that, halfway through the book, I’m reassured that it’s all right, after all. Hooray, I didn’t write a turkey! I haven’t cheated my readers! It’s actually good!

It’s quite a load off my mind.

I know I’ll go through the same song and dance with The Palace. Oh, well–that’s just me, it can’t be helped. At least I’m not blase about my work. Maybe if I had 700+ titles published, like Barbara Cartland, or 600, like John Creasey, I’d be able to ease up a bit.

So… I like the book, and now I can’t wait to see if readers like it, too. And of course that’s what really matters.


Another Stinker to Avoid

Last night Patty and I watched the opening episode of The Fall, a new BBC  Two police drama starring Gillian Anderson, the enviro-fascist who was so good as Agent Scully in The X-Files. This turkey can be viewed on youtube or via Netflix–not that you should view it.

Okay, a serial killer is loose in Belfast and superstar detective Anderson is brought in to deal with it. We didn’t see her smile once during the whole broadcast hour–I guess because she’s supposed to be a two-fisted feminist. In one scene she spots a tall, handsome cop working a crime scene; so she has her car stopped and orders her driver to introduce her to the hunk, to whom she immediately gives her hotel room number. If she were a man, this would be sexual harassment. But the whole scene is just a lot of bilge.

The action whizzes by like a snail, a tree sloth, or a glacier. We have that legendary Belfast scenery to entertain us, a landscape on a par with that of Newark, NJ. We get to watch the murderer actually torturing and killing one of his victims–at which point we turned it off. Believe me, you don’t need this show in your life. Avoid The Fall.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like stories that point us toward a better place than the one we’re stuck in now. In Agatha Christie’s stories, for instance, murder is always a great wrong that must be punished, even if the victim is a loathsome toad who encumbers the earth. And meanwhile her lead character, Hercule Poirot, is kind to humble people and impeccably polite to all. So we wind up getting a glimpse of something better. The world does not have to be Obamaland.

The Fall leaves us stranded in a graffiti-covered killing ground.

They’re welcome to it, whoever they are. Self-congratulating liberals, probably. If that’s the world they want, that’s the world they’ll get.

 


Who’s the Best Sherlock?

Every now and then my wife and I like to gobble up a bunch of Jeremy Brett “Sherlock Holmes” episodes. Most of them were made in the 1980s, and they kept on making them until Brett’s health failed, and he died soon afterward.

These really are superb, and a lot of them are available on youtube. But are they the best? Since the invention of movies, countless actors have played Sherlock Holmes in countless movies about him. It would be impossible to name them all here; but here are a few which I think deserve mention.

*Not the best, but possibly the worst. Raymond Massey, best known for playing Abraham Lincoln, played Holmes in 1931, in The Speckled Band. Years later, Massey insisted this was the worst Sherlock Holmes movie ever. We are inclined to agree with him. In fact, it’s so weird, you really ought to track it down and see it yourself.

*Character actor Reginald Owen, best known for playing Scrooge in one of the many film incarnations of A Christmas Carol, played an uncharacteristically overweight Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. Not a critical success.

*Ronald Howard–not Opie, but the son of British actor Leslie Howard–played Holmes in a weekly TV series in 1954. You’d be surprised how good these were! Howard’s Sherlock seems to have a lot of fun being Sherlock Holmes. These are well worth your while, if you can find them.

*Critics loved Murder by Decree (1979), with Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson, up against Jack the Ripper. The supporting cast is phenomenal, and Plummer’s Holmes is lively and eccentric. Unlike so many others, this is such a strong film that the Sherlock Holmes star does not have to carry it. Which makes Plummer’s achievement look not quite as fine as it really is.

*For radio drama buffs, there’s John Patrick Lowrie as Holmes in Imagination Theater‘s long-running series. We love Lowrie because he does a perfect imitation of…

*Basil Rathbone! He played Holmes on stage, screen, and radio, and for many of us, he is the Sherlock Holmes. The only fault I find with Rathbone’s many Sherlock Holmes movies–and really it’s not his fault at all–is the setting. The producers insisted on updating Holmes. What a dumb idea! Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, his Watson, both wanted to set the stories where they belonged, in Victorian times–the gaslight era. Their brilliance makes the movies still worth watching today; but the true Holmes fan can only sigh. If only they’d listened to Rathbone! What masterpieces would we have today…

*Finally, the Jeremy Brett series has it all–the right actors, beautifully staged sets, and pretty faithful treatment of the stories. Brett looks like Sherlock Holmes; and the way he plays him, you’re never quite sure what Holmes is going to do. He treats his cases very seriously–and then suddenly he’ll startle you by jumping over a couch or something. David Burke and Edward Hardwicke took turns playing Watson, and their performances blend seamlessly into one other–easy to lose track of which Watson is in which episode.

I’m not terribly interested in “modern” treatments of Holmes, which have him and Watson text-messaging each other. In fact, I have no interest in it whatsoever.

 


How to Make Libs Think You’re Smart

If you ever feel the need to impress a bunch of progs and liberals, here are a few things you can say that’ll make them think you’re as smart as they are–one of the gang.

1. “Global warming causes homophobia, and vice versa.”

2. “We can too spend our way out of debt. Just watch!”

3. “Obamacare is a fantastic success, and only racists say it isn’t.”

4. “Diversity is everything, and anyone who doesn’t think so must be beaten senseless.”

5. “If the Bible’s so true, how come there’s nothing in it about evolution, past lives, or getting rid of capitalism? Huh? Huh?”

6. “The only reason anybody opposes amnesty for all those undocumented workers in the shadows, is because they can’t understand that America would be a better country if we made it more like Mexico or Somalia.”

Mind you, I’m not saying any of these statements is true. These are just things you can say to make libs like you and think you have a profound mind, just like theirs.

Why you should ever want to impress them is your own business.


Help Wanted: Blathering Numbskull

As reported by CNS News, June 14, our beloved IRS is advertising for a “diversity and inclusion specialist,” with a starting salary of $123,758 a year. CNS quoted the tax agency’s help-wanted ad as saying the diversity specialist [please pass the barf bag] will “serve as a change agent–”ugh! blap!–”to provide strategies, solutions, training, tools, resources–” here it comes–”and thought leadership“–yes, thought leadership, whatever the sod that is–” on diversity and foster inclusion…” He, she, or it will also “build internal awareness” for diversity and inclusion.

I wonder what “internal awareness” means. I wonder what happens to you if you don’t have “internal awareness” for diversity and inclusion.

Has anybody noticed that, used in this context, the words “diversity” and “inclusion” have absolutely no rational meaning? So what we’re really talking about here is $123,000 and change, ponied up by the defenseless American taxpayers, for someone to prate and babble about things that are totally meaningless.

Oh–this prating fool who will cost us $123,000 will also be empowered to “effect minor disciplinary measures, such as warnings and reprimands”. And for those who like their crapola to finish with a flourish, the ad winds up with this:

“At the IRS, you will use your skills… to help make America stronger.”

I think my appendix just popped.


Teaching the Romance of Suicide

A teacher at a trendy Manhattan prep school has raised a ruckus by assigning 9th-graders to write suicide notes. You can get the full story by reading “York Prep Teacher Asks Students to Compose Suicide Notes In School Assignment,” by Rebecca Klein, June 12, in The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ ).

The 9th-graders were reading The Secret Life of Bees as part of their literary education (lol!), and as one of the characters in the book commits suicide, the kids were assigned to write suicide notes, presumably as a means of gaining a deeper understanding of the character’s motivation. I haven’t read the bloody thing, and probably never will. It seems to be the usual exercise in racial scab-picking and injustice-collecting, anti-white and anti-male, and so on. Anyhow, the main thing is, the teacher had the kids write suicide notes. At least one parent remarked, “We pay a lot of money to send our kids to the school.” Sucker.

Toward the end of Ms. Klein’s article there are links to reports of similar incidents in Britain and France. So maybe playing up suicide is the newest cutting-edge fad in secular “education.”

Guess what–we all pay a lot of money to send our kids to school! Whether it’s a public high school or a fancy-schmancy prep school, it sucks up money like a black hole. The only difference is whether you pay it as a school tax or tuition.

Might I suggest, just as a general rule of life: Do not let strangers educate your children.

Unless, of course, you want your kids to learn about sodomy, gender-bending, suicide, socialism, class warfare, racial warfare, and all that other stuff that “educators” are so fond of.

Really, people–what else do these clowns have to do, to prove to you that they are a menace to your children?


In the Year 2030…

The old crystal ball last night showed me some pictures that made me uneasy about my country’s future.  I saw the top news stories for the year 2030.Here are some of the lowlights.

*Senate rejects “path to citizenship” for Caucasian Americans. Said Majority Leader Abdel-Aziz al-Zarkawi (D-Nuevo York), “I don’t know why anyone even suggested it.” The vote against the measure was unanimous, with all 100 Democrat senators voting no.

*To celebrate the mid-point of his fifth term in office, President Barack Hussein al-Akbar Obama issued Executive Order 15,971,202, allowing no one but “gays” to serve in local, county, state, and federal police forces.

*The last copy of the United States Constitution was destroyed in a formal shredding ceremony at the White House. “From now on, I am the Constitution,” said President and Exalted Leader Obama.

*A gallon of gasoline will now cost you $12,000.

*The aging Bill Ayres was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He took his oath on a copy of The Communist Manifesto, administered by Associate Justice Kim Kardashian.

*Human sacrifices were performed today in Washington, D.C., before the Colossus of George Soros, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the 500-foot tall effigy. Since the Washington Monument was torn down to make room for it, compulsory attendance laws have made the Colossus of Soros the most-visited site in America.

Think the crystal ball is kidding, folks? Maybe. But what they’re doing to our country, they’re doing right before our eyes.

God save us.

 


A Potboiler With a Vision

Every now and then–especially in his books about “Barsoom” (Mars)–Edgar Rice Burroughs would have a penetrating, almost prophetic vision that would go unrecognized because it was decades ahead of its time.

In Synthetic Men of Mars (1939), Ras Thavas, the Master Mind of Mars, embarks on a project to create artificial human beings. He grows them out of culture vats. These creatures, called “hormads,” very seldom seem to turn out quite right. In fact, some of them are such a mess as to be of no use at all. But Ras Thavas, like John Hammond in Jurassic Park, is convinced he can impose his will on nature if only he tries hard enough.

Well, something goes horribly wrong in Vat Room #4. Instead of producing individual hormads, the vats have begun to pump out a solid mass of writhing, hungry, ill-assorted body parts; and no one is able to stop it. It just grows and grows and grows, shooting forth monstrous heads and clutching hands, disconnected legs, undifferentiated tissue like a gigantic amoeba… yech! And if something isn’t done about it soon, it’ll take over the whole lab complex, then the whole island, and, theoretically, could keep on growing until it covers the entire planet and devours everything.

Now that’s what I call a vision. Not only did ERB anticipate cloning, and all that stuff. More importantly, his image of the all-consuming mess in Vat Room #4 is right on target as a metaphor for all-consuming statism. You know–the kind that aspires to a world government that can direct planning and land use for every little village on the planet, and, under the pretext of doing what’s best for us, swallow up every last one of our liberties. The kind of mess that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao did so much to pioneer. The kind that listens in on everybody’s phone calls.

The kind of hell you get after “progressive” thieves and murderers get through with “fundamentally transforming” your country.

In Synthetic Men of Mars, John Carter comes along with his air force and fire-bombs the hideous mass out of existence.

I don’t think our hideous mass will be quite so easy to get rid of.


A Truly Beautiful Film

One of the gems of our video collection is The Secret Garden (1993), directed by Agniezka Holland and based on the 1910 children’s literature classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

It’s a simple story. A little girl whom nobody wants takes over an abandoned garden that nobody wants, and shares it with a little boy whose widowed father is afraid to want him. Out of this comes love, and healing, and redemption.

Those are the things that God does. Throughout the Gospels, most of the actions performed by Jesus are acts of healing. In time, the Bible teaches us, God through Jesus Christ will heal this entire fallen world. We are privileged that, in many cases, God allows us to work with Him and for Him.

This film yesterday brought me to tears. The cinematography is gorgeous, the music score gentle and soul-stirring. Although there is no overt mention of Jesus Christ or Christianity, and even some bits of mumbo-jumbo or “magic” engaged in by the children, the message of the story could hardly be more Christian if it tried.

We are all in need of healing, many of us more than we know. All of Creation is in need of it–and will get it. God has so promised. Meanwhile, there are smaller healings and redemptions all around us. These are, as it were, small down-payments on the larger project: signs that God is nigh, that God is working in His world. He has not forgotten us. He never will.

It’s a rough ride, a lot of the time; but the day of regeneration is at hand and will not be delayed. God has already marked it on His calendar.

 

 


‘The Fugitive Prince’ Now on Sale

The author is always the last to know, but now I know: Book 5 of the Bell Mountain Series, The Fugitive Prince, is now on sale.

You can order it here by clicking “Books” or “The Fugitive Prince” and putting it in your cart; or from the Chalcedon Store at http://www.chalcedon.edu ; or from amazon.com .

Will one of you be the first to review it on the amazon.com page?


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