I spoke too soon when I said you’d have to wait for a paperback! Amazon may still be working the book into its listings, but High Desert Barbecue is now available at the CreateSpace bookstore.
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High Desert Barbecue is now available!
The trade paperback version is still a few days away, but with ebook sales now outstripping dead-tree editions, I don’t feel premature in announcing that High Desert Barbecue is now available for sale. If you have a Kindle or a Nook, or have downloaded the free readers for those formats to the portable device of your choice, you can now have a copy of the novel for a screaming deal: $2.99. The trade paperback will be $11.99.
I’m extremely happy with the final story, though you will have to judge for yourselves, of course. Whatever your reaction, don’t be afraid to review the book at Amazon, B&N or the forum of your choice — hey, if I’m going to put myself out there, I have to be able to take the bad reviews with the good ones, right?
A tale of suspense, pyromania and sexual tension, coming to an Amazon near you!
For those of you wondering just what I’ve been up to (let’s count hands! That’s one, two, three of you!), the fact is … I’ve been writing a novel. Final revisions to the manuscript are pending, and the book will be published in paperback and Kindle (and probably Nook) format in November.
High Desert Barbecue
Living as a squatter on public land, Rollo has long waged a personal war against the Forest Service, so it’s little surprise when rangers burn him out of his latest shack. But when Rollo is subsequently blamed for a disastrous wildfire, he seeks help from his close friend, Scott, an anarchically minded outdoors enthusiast, and Scott’s girlfriend Lani, who dislikes Rollo but shares his distaste for authority. While investigating a suspicious new forest fire, the trio interrupts a bizarre but vicious gang of environmental terrorists. Chased through the canyon country of northern Arizona, Rollo, Scott and Lani must rely on their wit and skills to survive. Just steps behind, their pursuers compensate for incompetence and sexual eccentricity with fanaticism and official connections. Hanging in the balance is the fate of human habitation throughout the West — or maybe just peace and quiet in downtown Flagstaff.
This book is a bit of an experiment for me — and not just since it’s a venture into fiction for a writer established as a columnist and blogger. I was raised in an era when self-publishing — known as “vanity publishing” back then — was a sure sign of crappy writing by a self-indulgent author. That was sort of still the case a few years ago when I bounced early chapters of the book off of New York literary agents — only to receive enthusiastic responses for the writing, along with heartfelt assurances that the story was too regional to be picked up by publishers.
So I put the manuscript aside.
But recently — over the past year in particular — the do-it-yourself ethos has revolutionized the publishing industry. E-readers and print-on-demand have made it very attractive to bypass the traditional publishing houses. In fact, I no longer see a reason to go the traditional route at all. So, out of the drawer (well, an old folder on my laptop) the manuscript came, and I set to work revising and finishing the story. The biggest surprise may have been the extent to which technology has changed in just a few years, necessitating an important plot revision.
Then an old friend who works as an editor and knows my fiction from long-ago days in a Boston-based writers group offered to review the manuscript. And here we go. The Kindle version will be priced at $2.99. Paperback pricing has yet to be set.
I’ll post news of the novel, links for purchasing, and reactions thereto, here and on High Desert Barbecue‘s Facebook page.
If the upcoming book piques your interest at all, please feel free to pass along the information.
No free speech, for the children
You know the most annoying thing in poorly executed pro-freedom novels? It’s how the villains often overtly state their hostility to freedom and their intention to strip rights away from the populace in favor of government control. Real villains are more subtle than that. They couch their incursions into liberty in soft language, justifying it as– What’s that? You say …
Oh. Never mind. The bar has apparently been moved. Carry on.
This, from a New York State Senate Independent Democratic Conference report on “cyberbullying” (crazy person caps in the original), Cyberbullying: A Report on Bullying in a Digital Age (PDF):
THE CHALLENGE LIES IN PROTECTING TEENAGERS FROM CYBERBULLYING WITHOUT TRAMPLING ON THE FREE SPEECH PROTECTIONS AFFORDED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT. THIS PROPOSED LEGISLATION ACCOMPLISHES THAT IN THE FOLLOWING WAY:
PROPONENTS OF FREE SPEECH HAVE LONG ARGUED THAT A SOCIETY THAT PUTS PEOPLE ON TRIAL FOR THINGS THEY HAVE WRITTEN OR SAID IS NO LONGER A TRULY DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. THE POWER OF THE WORD HAS BEEN UNDISPUTABLE; IT HAS BEEN ESSENTIAL TO PRESERVING DEMOCRACY AND, IN FACT, ITS FOUNDING PREMISE WAS TO PRESERVE THE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS: A “MARKET PLACE” WHERE CITIZENS COULD SORT THROUGH BELIEFS AND IDEAS WHICH BEST RESONATED WITH THEM AND DISCARD THOSE THAT DID NOT,74 THEREBY ALLOWING FOR THE CREATION OF AN EVER-EVOLVING, OPEN SOCIETY. MOREOVER, THEY CONTEND THAT FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS RECOGNIZED AS A HUMAN RIGHT UNDER ARTICLE 19 OF THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS,75 SO IT CANNOT AND MUST NOT BE LIMITED.
AND YET, PROPONENTS OF A MORE REFINED FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUE THAT THIS FREEDOM SHOULD BE TREATED NOT AS A RIGHT BUT AS A PRIVILEGE – A SPECIAL ENTITLEMENT GRANTED BY THE STATE ON A CONDITIONAL BASIS THAT CAN BE REVOKED IF IT IS EVER ABUSED OR MALTREATED. BRITISH PHILOSOPHER JOHN STUART MILL LONG ARGUED THAT “THE ONLY PURPOSE FOR WHICH POWER CAN BE RIGHTFULLY EXERCISED OVER ANY MEMBER OF A CIVILIZED COMMUNITY, AGAINST HIS WILL, IS TO PREVENT HARM FROM OTHERS.”76 HIS “HARM PRINCIPLE” WAS ARTICULATED IN AN ANALOGY BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. (1841-1935), AND STILL HOLDS TRUE TODAY: “THE RIGHT TO SWING MY FIST ENDS WHERE THE OTHER MAN’S NOSE BEGINS,” OR, A PERSON’S RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH ENDS WHEN IT SEVERELY INFRINGES UPON THE SAFETY AND WELL-BEING OF ANOTHER.
IN THE CASE OF CYBERBULLYING, THE PERCEIVED PROTECTIONS OF FREE SPEECH ARE EXACTLY WHAT ENABLE HARMFUL SPEECH AND CRUEL BEHAVIOR ON THE INTERNET. IT IS THE NOTION THAT PEOPLE CAN POST ANYTHING THEY WANT, REGARDLESS OF THE HARM IT MIGHT CAUSE ANOTHER PERSON THAT HAS PERPETUATED, IF NOT CREATED, THIS CYBERBULLYING CULTURE. BUT “HATE SPEECH” THAT CAUSES MATERIAL HARM TO CHILDREN SHOULD HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
IN SUMMARY, ALTHOUGH SPEECH IS GENERALLY PROTECTED UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT, THERE ARE INSTANCES IN WHICH RESTRICTIONS ARE WARRANTED. …
Add ten more “bad novel” points for couching the proposal to redefine rights as privileges in “for the children” language.
Truly, the novel can not keep up with reality.
Power brokers must love the street theater
Sigh.
If nothing else, the Occupy Wall Street protests provide (yet another) reminder that the political “Left” can be just as incoherent, unrealistic and authoritarian as the political “Right.” Compare all of the snickering over tricorner hats and overheated verbiage at Tea Party gatherings to wacky signs and this prominent (unofficial) list of demands at the Occupy Wall Street website.
I think both groups have legitimate grievances — overgrown government on the one hand and corporatist cronyism on the other — but the fact is that grassroots political movements are messy. And, in reality, real people on the streets don’t always know what the fuck they’re talking about, even when expressing heart-felt outrage.
So you end up with movements that, at their fringes, compare elected officials to genocidal totalitarian dictators, and demand the destruction of industrial civilization.
Unfortunately, the net beneficiaries of grassroots lunacy are the powers-that-be, who can simply sit back, point at the street theater, and say: “Would you really prefer to put the crazies in charge?”
The real answer, of course, is that we shouldn’t want anybody “in charge”. Because, so long as somebody is in charge, they’ll inevitably accumulate ever-more power on behalf of themselves and their cronies — the root complaints of both the Tea Partiers and the Occupiers.
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