I was happily showing my 24-year-old son, Cameron, the draft ms of By the Hands of Men, Book Four: Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen.
All 109,000 words and 367 pages.
He took a look at and, apparently unimpressed, observed: “Looks like you’ve got about a quarter of a Martin there.”
So, in case you’ve ever been looking for a way to quantitatively describe a book, there’s your unit of measurement. A Martin.
That’s my boy.…
Actually, it was last week, but I’ve been too busy with other (secret) projects to announce it.
But I’ve finished the first draft of the final book in my “By the Hands of Men” series.
Working title: “Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen,” but that may change.
…
Awfully kind praise from novelist and blogger Connie Huddleston:
LibProgs have gone insane over the realization that half of America voted for the wrong candidate. This election belonged to the Democrats. The 1000-year Reich Reign Of Enlightenment was within their grasp. The Living Constitution would be beaten into compliance with whatever principles (okay, whims) were agitating the Dems at the time. Smart Science™ would be supreme, with jail time for Climate Change deniers…er, dissenters…ah, hell, call them what they are, heretics. Journalists would once more return to their rightful places at the seats of power––no, not providing their faces as seat cushions, but it’s not an unreasonable guess.
And history would have been rewritten to reflect higher truths. From the NYTimes with their trendy “Sex in Communist …
It’s one of the reasons to love the part of East Texas where we live.
…
One of my personal failings (well, the only one I feel like admitting) is I have a strong fairness impulse. It was the whole Martin Luther King thing, judge people by the content of the character not the color of the skin. My father, who had grown up in the deep South surrounded by virulent racism, introduced me to the concept, mostly by the way he lived his life, treating everyone he met with the same courtesy, fairness, and respect. It was what made me a nascent liberal as a young man.
That belief in fairness was the same thing that drove me away from Liberals. Growing up, my experiences with
Don’t know why. Maybe it’s something about their faces. They seem to take life very seriously.
Turns out in Texas (where we moved and are enjoying a great deal), there are places with more donkeys than local forage for them. Rather than euthanize them, the state allows people to adopt these donkeys. Basically, you are fostering the donkey on your land.
Since I hate the idea of animals suffering (see my first By the Hands of Men novel for more on that)…
…once we get some good green East Texas acreage, I plan on adopting. Since they’re herd animals, it would be cruel to only have one, and so there are two donkeys in my future.
I’m going to …
With the impending release of “The Broken Return, Book 3 of The Lonesome George Chronicles,” (and Book One “The Big Bang” is on sale for 99 cents)
and a recent move to Texas…
…I’ve been lagging on updating my faithful fans with details of my doin’s.
Along with everything else (and I haven’t even mentioned the 80-year-old historic home we’re renovating or “Ringside at the Circus of the Fallen” (working title of “Book Four of my By the Hands of Men” series), I did manage to sneak in a radio interview with The Writer’s Block, out of Los Angeles. The fellas were damn kind, and had this to say:
The story picks up right where Book 2 ended, following the leaders of the rising Resistance as they struggle to survive in what remains of a USA shattered by nuclear attack and a Jihadist invasion in the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.
In the Arizona desert, Whistler and his tiny band of isolated fighters link up with other patriots to attack the soldiers of the Caliphate.
In Washington, congressional aides Karen and Kevin watch as an unelected government arises on the ashes of the old one and makes a secret deal with America’s enemies.
And, in California, ex-media celebrities Molly Ivins and Alec Baldwin find the will to …
Copyright 2020 · Roy M. Griffis – Storyteller
