That Had To Leave A Mark.

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I’ve touched on this topic a bit in the past, and it’s been brought to my attention by other, kinder writers – bad reviews really sting.

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My friend Stacy Monson (Who is a wise and lovely person) wrote a good post about critical reviews that authors post on Amazon. Her point was a simple one – Why?

When you think about it, and I did in the wake of her post (may have been on Facebook…) you have to ask yourself what you, or the reading public, gain from a hideous review. After a great deal of soul-searching I realized that the answer wasn’t very nice. I’d taken great joy in writing reviews on Amazon – especially the negative ones.

I went to my reviews column and removed all the negative ones in the wake of that post. I’d written some pretty biting, funny, sarcastic posts about books that I’d read, or attempted to read, and given out my share of one star reviews. I think, in all fairness, that one was about 1/2 a star more than a few of the books deserved, but that’s not the point. The point is that I was turning into the same kind of loon that attacks me in the emails I get on this blog.

I still write reviews on Amazon, but my new rule is that if I can’t give at least a rating of four to the book I’ll forego the review. That means that I hold my tongue in my fat head and keep mum about some of the books I read. I don’t always review the four and five star books, but I just won’t do the really bad ones at all. Don’t read my lack of a review as a criticism of a book – it might just mean that I’m too lazy to go and write about it at that moment.

The whole thing was brought home for me this past week when one author I admire wrote a two star review of another friend of mine. I’ve read all of their books – both of them. Both are good authors with great styles. Both write completely different genres. Both are widely respected in their field. Both are award winners. But I was really stunned to see that bad review gracing the internet.

It made me wonder if one of them had stolen the desert at a banquet from the other’s place. If one had bad feelings over some trivial thing and it had escalated to professional sabotage. Or, if they really just hated the other’s book and went public with their criticism.

I’ll still trash bad restaurants – that’s more of a public service than a review when a fat guy takes a stand. I won’t do it for the mundane stuff that happens, but if there’s a really bad meal I’ll fire a flare – the mediocre will draw no such ire. I’ll still rip on poorly done movies and television if they could have avoided the issue, just as I’ll praise the wonderful things that grace the screen. But I won’t rip on another author. Tastes vary too much for that to be a fair thing to do in this world. Unfortunately my opinion, as a wannabe, holds more weight than the average reader. The readers of this blog carry word of mouth about things and I don’t want to be responsible for another author having a flop because of some stupid thing I wrote.

Yup, that’s the final item – I’m in competition with them and if I don’t have something nice to say, I won’t say anything at all.

How about you – where do you draw the line on public criticism of people in your profession?

Sponsorship Sunday – Week Twenty-Two – Gernadette

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This week’s entry is a bit more fun than most for me. I had the opportunity to watch a video from Grace Village on the web this week and for just a moment I was back in the room where the worship services are held. My bond with the children was strengthened just a bit and I’ve looked forward to doing this entry for days. I hope you will find it in your heart to sponsor Gernadette and help provide for her needs.

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This week’s child is: Gernadette.

Gernadette

Gernadette

Gernadette has a wonderful sense of humor and loves to make others laugh. Gernadette looks forward to mission team visits because team members like to play jump rope with the girls. Gernadette enjoys learning new languages, especially French and English. Gernadette will tell you that singing is her special gift and her favorite song is Lord My God. Gernadette wants to be a nurse when she grows up so that she can help her family and other people. Gernadette lives at Grace Village with her siblings Idemen, Samiel and Gerno. Gernadette’s prayer request is to be able to finish school.

Gernadette and her siblings, Idamen, Samiel and Gerno, were abandoned by their parents and now call Grace Village home.

Birth Info
Birthdate: June 25, 1998
Place of Birth: Tabarre, Haiti

It is my hope that one of you will find your heart touched by this child and take up a bit of Christ’s work by sponsoring them for an extended period. My wife and I are sponsoring a pair of sisters and we took on the commitment based on having to only gave up a fast-food dinner each day to change the life of a child. God came through with a very lucrative bit of voice over work for me that covered the bill that same day, but it really is as easy as skipping a value meal. Healing Haiti will do the right things for these children and I have full confidence in their work. I am not affiliated with them, they don’t endorse this blog, nothing like that at all. I just love kids (can’t be Santa and not love children) and know that Grace Village is the difference between life and death for many of these children. Please open your heart and prayerfully reflect on the opportunity God’s giving us to sponsor these children. Some of them have come out of slavery and have some of the toughest lives you could imagine prior to Grace Village.

Just click the link and it will take you directly to the page where you can sponsor this week’s child. And if God is particularly good and that child is sponsored when you get there, please grab another smiling face and change their life instead. My goal is to put Sponsorship Sunday out of business as quickly as possible and take that day off each week. Thank you. God bless you for your generosity.

Some Palate Cleanser For A Friday.

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After a busy week of heavier posts, I’m ready to kick back and throw some fun stuff out there for a change. Let’s start with the latest from Nicki Bluhm And The Gramblers. They do videos they call “van sessions” in which they play a cover of a popular tune (usually 20+ years old) and record it on the i-phone. Usually great stuff. Today’s is a cover of the old Boz Scaggs tune – Lido Shuffle.

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Now, let’s go for a bit edgier video – Pat Benatar’s – Hit Me With Your Best Shot as done by Nicki Bluhm And The Gramblers

I hope those set you off on the path to a relaxing weekend. I’ll be back Sunday with Sponsorship Sunday, and Monday with some more things about things. Still working on the book update post.

Another Cultural Guidepost Gone – R.I.P. Tom Clancy

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Thank you, Tom Clancy, for some of the best reading in my long career as a book junkie. Thank you for redefining the genre. Thank you for making me drop my jaw and slam the book shut more than once when you rolled out something TOP SECRET CODEWORD in your pages.

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For a number of years I savored Tom Clancy books and stretched out my reading time to make sure that I didn’t miss a single detail. Tom was the master of the techno-thriller, and I admired his work greatly. In my own writing I have to work very hard to avoid doing what he did so well – getting technical. I have to avoid it for two reasons:

1. I can go to prison for doing it accurately.
2. It would bore you to tears.

Tom Clancy took all of us on an adventure with his books. He knew his subject matter, and there was a great deal of speculation in some quarters that he was being fed information from inside the government. Why? Because it would floor the Soviets to learn that their greatest secrets and plans were known in the western world and a novelist had access to them.

I was out and about one time on a submarine and the captain handed me a Tom Clancy book dogeared to a page he wanted me to read. I read the page and almost passed out. It was something really, really sensitive. The captain laughed and said, “I figured you were the only other guy on the boat that knew about that.” He shut the book and walked out of the radio room. If either one of us had discussed that topic we’d go to prison. Tom Clancy put it in his book. Yup, he had sources.

But Tom Clancy had something else – he had a narrative style that will be remembered long after all of us are gone. He wrote well (and voluminously) about his characters. As a result, they stuck with us from book to book. And on into the movies. And into our hearts.

Tom Clancy did something else: he honored our military. He wrote in glowing terms of my service in particular during the Cold War. It’s easy to forget that the United States disparaged it’s military before Desert Storm. During the 1980’s Tom was a breath of fresh air. He understood us and wrote about our lives. I was always proud to tell people that what I did was a bit like a Tom Clancy novel. I knew sonar techs like “Jonesy” and served under a captain who was proud of the fact that he threw Tom off his boat. (Tom was peeking under things he shouldn’t have according to the captain.) Tom may never have spent a moment doing those jobs, but he knew our hearts and who we thought we were. He honored our intentions.

Tom Clancy will never wear out his welcome in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of us who served during that time. He was our scribe. We will miss him greatly.

Addicts & Government – Shutdown Day Three

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First, let me just express my outrage at the Obama administration for sending the National Park Service to barricade the WWII monument in Washington, D.C. Lest you (and you know who you are) cry out about my intolerance of the administration, I’d like to point out that many other monuments and exhibits have been left open – precisely because they are open. No gates, no doors, no fences and have been like that for years.

This administration went out of it’s way to close the WWII memorial and actually put up fencing to keep people out. Wrong crowd to mess with, Barack. Did you really think that the guys who stormed the beaches at Iwo Jima and dropped out of the skies in Remagen would be stopped by some fencing? If I lived in the area I’d take a week off and do my bit for civil disobedience at the monument every day.

There is a vindictive and mean streak in this administration that wants to punish the public and turn every thing that happens into the fault of the Republican party. I’m anything but a fan of the Republican party, and if you’ve read this blog for any length of time that’s pretty obvious. The same kind of mendacity that led to threats to slow down air traffic in the wake of the government’s sequester – a device proposed by the administration but still blamed on the House of Representatives -led to the blocking of the Greatest Generation in their visits to the memorial.

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We’ve now gone almost four years without a budget. Let’s see, that dates back to when one party took control of the White House and the Senate. Strange how that worked.

My title for the blog today is descriptive of my frame of mind here. I’ve had several comments (all deleted) about how horrible the shutdown is, and how it hurts us all. It sounds more than a little bit like the soundtrack to an episode of Intervention.

The argument, and it’s a terrible one, is that we’re dependent on the flow of money and services from the government and anything that slows that down, or stops it, will hurt everyone in the nation. I’ll gladly admit that it does hurt some people – people that need a passport, government employees, people applying for new benefits or immigration changes, etc. But when the government classifies 1,100,000 employees as nonessential, I have a bit of a problem with the whole issue.

We, the American people, have become addicted to free stuff. At all levels of government. And when the whining starts about the layoffs and lack of paychecks for government workers I am sympathetic for those that work hard and have lost their check. I am, however, all too aware of how it goes in the private sector – same thing but it’s permanent.

I can’t imagine my employer having 1,100 extra employees for more than about the time it takes to lay them off. Nor can most people that work for private corporations. We, the ones who pay for government, don’t have the luxury of what amounts to perpetual employment.

There are many good and noble employees of the Federal Government. As a matter of opinion, I’d venture to say that most of them are pretty good citizens with their hearts in the right place. But the government continues to grow faster than any other employer. More things all the time. More duplication and waste all the time. And it has to stop somewhere.

The government shutdown is not the ideal way to address the issue of government size and waste. But the cowardice shown by our alleged leaders (on both sides of the aisle) in my lifetime prevents any rational debate of the topic. People bemoan the Tea Party – and yet they are not radicals. They are more like the founders of this country than either of the two major parties. Good government is not synonymous with big government. Good government is a lean device that takes the least treasure and freedom from the hands of the citizens. It is a government that does not intrude into the private affairs of its citizens, and instead works to protect them from crime and war. It is not the device (at the federal level) to regulate schools, oatmeal production, and school loans.

We, like the people in that episode of Intervention, have for so long just handed more money to the addict that we see no other option. The addict becomes more ill every day and we become less well and wealthy. Only when we cut off the addict and quit feeding the habit does everyone get better.

It is time to cut off the addict. Let’s get this poor wretch into a rehab facility and get them clean and sober. It’s all of us who benefit from that step towards recovery.