Surfer Girl

Surfer Girl runs barefoot through the sandy lot
Surfer Girl shows her bra strap above her halter top
Surfer Girl bobs and dances about
and stuffs a hot pizza slice in her mouth
Surfer Girl surfer girl surfer girl... 
Pretty brown surfer girl... ;)

Work and Death

I look up and see I haven't done a blog post for five months!  It's not like I haven't been writing - it's just that it's been in my head!  Brilliant, incredible stuff that would set the world afire, but I never quite got around to writing it down.  Dumb. The trip to Panama was a whirlwind, exhilarating experience (more later) but it's been go go go since December; really; more like all year; really more like two years. But let me back up:

He's waiting to die, I'm waiting to live. 

That's the way it's been around here for months now. I'm working hard on my second nonfiction biz/tech book within six months, which I wasn't quite ready to do, since I am still doing little things like final edits, getting blurbs/endorsements, and scheduling speaking engagements and book signings for the first book, while my older brother, who lives across the street, has been battling and enduring cancer and worse yet, cancer treatments. He had chemo and radiation, even surgery, and it did shrink the tumor in his ass, but now it has spread to his skull.  He's probably got it from head to toe now; the results of the full body scan they did will be in next week. He was having terrible headaches that even morphine didn't knock out, so they increased his dose. There are hideous lumps on top of his bald head, and he walks stiffened somewhat like Frankenstein, due to his weakened state--and the e-coli infection he had in his spine that landed him in the hospital three months which started all this over 18 months ago.  Before that, he was a strong, healthy, boisterous man of 64 still working full-time.

He is just across our pedestrian street, so when I take a break from the toil that is nonfiction, or just take the garbage out, or head to the gym, that's what I'm treated to.  He has no one else.  His daughter and son are nowhere to be seen.  His worthless girlfriend flaked out as soon as he got sick and couldn't buy her drinks. There's no escaping it. The neighbors next door are nice, but it's on me. I can't feel sorry for myself since I'm not the one who is deathly ill. In fact, in some ways, things have never been better for me, at least career-wise.  I finished the first book, which will help American corporations (and others) to protect their trade secrets and maintain their competitive advantage. This next book on e-records, will hopefully be used as a text to train the next generation of records managers, archivists, and information governance professionals. There are no complete and current books on the topic, which seemed strange to me, until I started putting together this book and realizing just how huge and complex the topic has become. It's a monster. And preparing a book for a major publisher (Wiley) is no picnic -- they are exacting and uncompromising and need to be. So I've solicited 7-8 expert colleagues from around the world who are editing specific sections of the book that deal with their expertise area, which will help make the book the authoritative ever on the topic.

A couple of weeks ago a business partner in Chicago suddenly died.  Before that, a business partner in Toronto retired due to failing health. He was going to work with me on this book. Death and dying everywhere around me.

It's come with a mountain of stress.I've worked so hard on the sections on e-records inventorying, retention and disposition, taxonomy development, and international standards to the point of mental exhaustion.  Then I handed them off to my esteemed colleagues, shooting for the May 15 deadline I had agreed to.

In March, I'd just returned from Panama after two months, and I had to do some editing on the first book while I was gone but other than that, I didn't work much.  I didn't write; I only thought long and hard about writing. And I read a comprehensive biography of Hemingway that had much more detail than anything I'd read. It tied his personal life with his professional writings so you could see how his life experiences impacted his work. I didn't realize he wrote a Broadway play, which made me feel a bit better about my play, and the effort I put into it.

I like the part where, stone drunk, Hemingway brought a Havana hooker to dinner to meet his wife. She got him back by putting it in the book. He deserved it - lots of examples of pretty boorish behavior, beyond wild, just rude.

I did write a little bit. There is that New Year's Day story that I will have to dig out and post here, which I wrote on idyllic Senidup Island in the Caribbean, just off the Panamanian coast.  It was the first of what were going to be daily writings all year.  That lasted a day and a half. But it sure was nice to have all that time, pure time, in Panama.  I rented a little studio apartment in Bocas del Toro and had my little corner of peace and serenity. I could walk to a nearby beach, grab some cold Panama (my fav!) bottles of beer, and eat some fresh seafood or chicken. Or I'd go on a bike ride to the end of the road and back, from the Saygon area and back, sometimes going all the way to another beach and hanging out watching the surfers. Or I'd take the basketball I bought and go shoot some hoops or a pick-up game nearby.  Pretty nice. No kitchen  in the apartment, so I just bought a hotplate to make breakfast, but the food was cheap enough at restaurants (as little as $4 for a meal) so I ate out a lot. I lost over 15 pounds just eating fish, chicken and a lot of salad, and exercising a lot.

Things were simple there. Here, I've got this nice, new 3-story beach house overlooking the Pacific that I can barely keep up with while I work. Thankfully, a maid came yesterday and cleaned. Hell, every inch of the place is tile, since it's near the ocean and carpet would just mildew and rot, so sweeping and mopping that all is a big chore.  I've been here two years and never tackled it.

So, back to the deadline: I was shooting for May 15 to try to get the book published by September 15, in time for a trade show in Chicago that I'm speaking at.  Looks like I'm not going to make it, but if I can get it done by the end of the month, there's still a chance.

Nope.

I have to remind myself that I'm trying to accomplish a task that no one else in the world - no professional in my field - has ever done. First, no one has ever written a book this complete on the topic of e-records - there are only 2-3 books out there and they are incomplete and out-of-date. The one that is being used as a text all over the world is an embarrassment, it's so dated. And I'm trying to write the best one ever in 60 days? 75? 90? While I'm finishing up the first?  That's another thing: few of the top experts in the world have ever written a book. They're too busy, or they can't write well (although most can), or they can't tackle something like that mentally. And I'm doing TWO within six months?  Planning for THREE in a year?  No wonder I've been stressed out.

It will be just great when the books are all done. A stream of royalties, paid speeches and high-level consulting work around the world. I hope.

In a week or so, I'll have this next book shaped up pretty well, and I'm hoping that in three weeks I can wrap it up. I'm sure it'll drag out like the last one, but not to that degree - I learned some lessons on exactly how the publisher wants things and I'm getting it right the first time, this time.  Not re-writing the damn thing three freakin' times.

Back to my brother's situation: I get to talk about things like where he wants his ashes thrown, what he wants done with his car and furniture, and things like that.  Not so much fun.

This is the second brother I've watched die slowly.  I won't have any more left. Bill, who I grew up with, died in 1994 after a long illness. He lived it up for a while but in the end, he was scared - he was only 37. I tried to reassure him and he turned to me and said, "That's easy for you to say, you're on the other side of things." I couldn't argue. I had my life ahead of me. But he did hold out hope that he would see our beloved, ever-loving Grandmother Smallwood (the sweetest woman ever on this earth), and our father, in the afterlife. I held his hand at night as he slept that last week, until one night I just didn't feel right, I had the bizarre fear that he might awake suddenly and have a seizure and stab me with his pick line needle, so I slept on the couch near his bed. In the morning his blank green eyes were fixed on the ceiling and he was dead.

I remember the ambulance coming and them zipping him up in a body bag, the crown of his head flopping to the side as they zipped it shut, and then carried his carcass out and drove off.

This Darn Book

I've gone through two full rounds of edits on this nonfiction business-technology book I'm doing. I was totally exhausted after that last round, and have barely been able to function for over a month. But I was about ready to start on the second book (in the three-book series) but now the editor at the publisher are saying the first two times, the editors didn't catch everything, and this new copyeditor found some more things I need to correct to fit their style (things like brackets instead of parentheses, but also some heavy paraphrasing) so, of course, I have to go back through it and pick to the tiniest detail and make some more edits.  And just when I felt this 10-ton truck lifting from my compressed ribs!

Hunter Thompson's Rum Diary

Saturday morning was a brilliant, warm one, brought on by the Santa Ana winds, but the winds hadn't arrived yet.  The Pacific was calm and peaceful, the sky was pure blue, and rather than running off to exercise at 8 am I sat down with Hunter S. Thompson's novel, The Rum Diary. The movie has just come out and Johnny Depp plays the main character, a young journalist named Paul Kemp (who is basically HST).  I want to see the movie, but when I saw the book in the window while walking in downtown San Diego, I just had to get it.

The book had been sitting on my desk for a few days tempting me, making me relish the feasting of it all the more. I sat and read, interested, delighted, sometimes amused and laughing out loud, and wondering why he couldn't get it published until 30 years after he'd written it.  He had to be famous first. Plus he had this good friend named Johnny Depp.

I read half of it in the morning, and the other half as the afternoon waned.  It is not a great book, but a good book and a good story that is told in a writing voice that little resembles some of his later writings. There is some poetry of writing in it, certainly, and some well-written passages.  But mostly, it is readable. The Rum Diary takes you on a fun little jaunt to Puerto Rico, with a some foibles and fistfights. There is a petite blonde who is first introduced when he sees her in the airport boarding the plane, and for a while I thought he had forgotten about her --- breaking a cardinal rule of writing when introducing characters. But she was there again, angelic nymphet, coquettishly frolicking  naked in the ocean, and then teasing and flirting throughout the book until the final wildness (which I won't reveal, so I don't spoil the book for you).

So, on one hand, I saw a young writer following the rules, but on the other, breaking them: in an early scene on the plane he (Kemp) beats and old man for trying to take the seat he wanted to save for the blonde.  Then he thrashes him again while hurrying out of the plane to find the fine blonde. Not exactly a "likable character" and this is the protagonist.  And any Creative Writing 101 class, I'm sure (although I've never had one) will tell young writers that they must first create likable characters and then put them into "challenging" situations. But as Tom Robbins says, "in fiction, whatever works, works."  There should be no rules.

I enjoyed the book, from cover to cover, with only a little drag in the middle.  There were a lot of hamburgers and beer and glasses of rum, a lot of eating and drinking scenes, and several fighting ones.  It's a fun story, a little depraved and a lot of drinking -- especially toward the end -- but not near as much boozing as a Bukowski novel.

It is clearly and plainly written, an easy read. There aren't wasted sentences or too many adjectives, although he probably overused the word "savage" and he tended to begin paragraphs too often with "I" -- sometimes 4-5 times on a page.  This is a weakness to me, the sign of a young writer.  But then again, he was young when he wrote it.  On the other hand, I am sure it has been thoroughly scrubbed and edited dozens of times so that the finished book is far from the original manuscript.

The plot-line of the story is simple and well done, and it follows a logical progression while keeping you interested. There is good tension.  The writing may be considered on the "crude" side at times but it is not raw or pornographic -- absolutely not a mention of a private part beyond pink nipples and a muff, and the sex scenes are mostly romantic, nuanced or suggested, and not so much graphic detail.

Here are a few funny and/or notable passages from the book:


The light in gambling rooms is not good for aging women. It catches every crease in their faces and every wart on their necks; drops of sweat between fallow breasts, hairs on a nipple momentarily exposed, a flabby arm or a sagging eye.

*     *     *     *     *

Suddenly she began to howl: at first I thought I was hurting her, but then realized she was having some sort of  extreme orgasm.  She had several of them, howling each time, before I felt the slow bursting of mine.

*     *     *     *     *

I bought a bottle of beer for fifteen cents and sat on the bench in the clearing, feeling like an old man.  The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories--not of things I had done but of things I failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back.

 

*     *     *     *     *

The waterfront was nearly deserted, the stores were closed, and only the churches seemed to be doing any business. We passed several of them, and in front of each one was a colorful knot of people--tan-skinned men and boys in freshly pressed suits, flowery women with veils, little girls in white dresses, and here and there a priest in a black robe and a tall black hat.

*     *     *     *     *

"If you insist on going by appearances then you'd be better off in some place like Texas."

*     *     *     *     *

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who can see it coming and jump aside.  Like a frog evading a shillelagh in a midnight marsh.

*     *     *     *     *

The Rum Diary

My Near Drowning

Last Thursday, September 15, seemed like any other cloudy warm day.  It was almost the day I perished.

I'd just finished writing my new nonfiction book after 2 months of heavy work.  I'm not used to that much hard writing at a shot, and it wore me out mentally.  I was exhausted; got up at 3am Wednesday and finished the last bit by 6am.  At 7, The Crazy Canuck and I went off to a yoga class.  He'd stayed for another week after Baby Doll left to go back to work in central Mexico.

The class was uneventful, although, as with every new class, there were some new stretches, and angles.  I hit the weights afterward but not too much.  So when I got up Thursday morning, I had a couple of sore spots.  Canuck was sleeping in so I went off to try the pilates class.  It was uneventful, but some of the exercises hit muscles I don't usually hit, and in different ways.  Afterward, I hit the weight circuit a bit again.

That afternoon, Canuck was up for a workout so we walked to the gym and he did some spinning while I did weights; he did some stretching and pushups and I stayed in the weightroom. Afterward, he wanted to take a dip in the cold Pacific -- it's great for the post-workout muscles, and we'd done it a couple of times since he arrived, which was more times than I'd been in that water all year.  It's just too cold, and the beach isn't so nice.  But the sunsets are gorgeous to look at.

I donned my short wetsuit, and he was still looking to buy one, so we stopped in at a used clothing store on the beach.  No wetsuits, so we walked down to the beach, set our things down, and he grabbed his goggles.

We waded in---oooohh, damn it was cold!  I got the first splash in, spraying Canuck with cold droplets while my wetsuit fended off his return splashes.  The water got deeper and we dove in.  I'd told him I wanted to get a good workout, try to keep moving for 20 minutes, so I was running in the water, taking bigger and bigger strides to stretch out this hip muscle that's been bothering me.

When my a-hole high school track coach had me run a pre-season race my senior year after I'd already injured my back with another of his stupid ideas (doing field events indoors, since it was raining, and I missed the high jump cushion, landing with all my weight on the hard floor and jarring my back hard), permanently injuring it then - running in the water was the only way I was able to get back on the track and even then, I was never the same.  Like Bo Jackson.  Um, sort of.

So I'm running, and paddling some, and the waves got bigger, and bigger, and I was leaping off the ocean floor high to the top of the waves, all the while, laughing, playing, and joking with Canuck. It was invigorating.

Suddenly -- and I mean within seconds, I turned and we were separated, he was 40 or 50 yards away, and I was going further out, so I swam as hard as I could, looked up, and I was even further out.  I tried again and was going nowhere.  Then all the things they tell you about drowning started to happen. I was confused.  Fatigue set in.  Things weren't right.

I could see Canuck making his way back to shore and I could see a yellow truck and red lifeguard suits.  Something was being barked through a megaphone.  One of my contact lenses came off and the whole scene went blurry.  I was panting for air, really tiring, and it got serious.

Here's a poem I wrote a few nights ago (between sobs):


MY NEAR DROWNING

by Robert F. Smallwood

A cloudy September day over the sea
ordinary, gray;
vast, sleepy waves
surging

Rolling surf nears the shore
growing, gaining power

we wade in
BRRRR! It's cold!

Colder than it should be
  on a warm day

SPLASH! A playful volley

SPLASH! SPLASH! It's returned
laughter
bounding in, jumping,
  squealing like kids
embracing the cold
Pacific waters
 loving them
 refreshed by them
foamy gray waves
   rise crash and fizz

I leap in rhythm
bounding high
buoyed by the surf
kicking as joyously
as a little boy
Again.

A wave rises
  and rolls in
I spring up
off the ocean's floor

leaping high
like Superman!

running and kicking
salty cool waters
welcoming waters
as if I can fly
in the Ocean

A few more seconds of joy

Then, so fast it was a blink
I see my friend
halfway to shore
struggling
and me
pushed out to sea.

The shore seemed
   too far off
Something wasn't right
I looked for the
   next wave
Tried to launch with
my legs
kicking maniacally
head down, pumping
arms overhead
putting all my strength
into battling back
to shore

But when I looked up
gasping for breath
the shore was farther
than before

So I swam
harder, this time
as fast as I could
pounding
those monstrous
                         waves

Slapped in the face
  with a crest
  lungs burning
  panting hard
  heart pounding full force
another crest smacks my head
from the other direction
like a right hook from a boxer
to finish me off

I lose a lens
and things become blurry
    and worse

Struggling more
   paddling arms and legs
   almost flailing
   gasping, panting
now wheezes

There isn't enough air

My limbs become leaden
Heavy and tired
 in the icy waters

Heart is leaping out of my chest
there is no Rest;

I look to the shore
  and see a small blurred crowd
    gathering to watch
I see a truck
I see the red blot
of lifeguards
I hear garbled noise
  from a megaphone
It's loud
but I can't hear
what they're saying

I am so tired
There is no Rest
hard to breathe
not enough air
water everywhere
I can see the shore
  with all my effort
all my Strength
all my determination
I cannot beat it.
Failure.
I am fighting
for my Life
wheezing and coughing
and splashing
I wonder
'Why don't they help me?'
'Where is a jetski?'
'Why don't they help me?'

I'm confused
exhausted
tired as I've ever been
I raise my hand slowly
      in defeat

"help" comes out of my mouth
It's not a word I've used
It seems foreign
traveling through my brain
and out of my lips

"Help!" Again, a little louder
but weak
I knew they couldn't hear
I hoped they could see
I was in Trouble
'Why don't they help me?'

my hand dropped into the water
to help the other
I was in real trouble
and I knew it

I paddled and panted

Suddenly a voice, close
right behind me
Words, fast and unintelligible
Spanish
I turn
A brown-faced teen
with big shoulders
threw a float over me
He went to work
   securing the harness
Rattling off more words
  I didn't understand

But that thin yellow float
a beautiful bright yellow
  was the best thing
   the most cherished thing
I'd ever laid my hands on.

Some relief,

He ducked his shock of raven hair
underwater
and I was pulled,
propelled quick
with animal power

Like a porpoise
with a purpose

as if a dolphin
were towing me
the kind of strength
I no longer had
   Maybe never had
I tried to help
kicking, flailing
hoping the joint effort
would help us both
Survive.

He moved swiftly
diagonally
through the sea waters
toward the shore

He popped up
and said something
It didn't register
He went back to slapping the waters
Powerful, brave
Otherworldly strokes
of marine power
that few humans
ever possess

We got nearer
a foot touched down and skidded
I'm panting harder
as hard as ever
He drags me
I try to get to my feet
I stumble
He keeps dragging
I stagger
Like a roped steer

finally get my feet
under me

The current is only
knee high now
but it's still strong
trying to pull me into
the rip current

I'm staggering forward
He's pulling the rope
we make it to shore - unsteadily

My friend is there
I'm still alive
(I'm supposed to be here, for now)

I feel feeble, never so feeble
Weak, tired, old, depleted, grateful,
humbled, tired, scared, happy,
thankful, regretful, tired

and so very stunned.

Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of those books you hear about over and over but hardly anyone actually reads.  I found it joyously well-written, with some incredibly nimble and poetic passages.  It is a profound work.  Here's the opening Preface, which is serious and philosophical, and at times, confusing.  It makes you think.

The Preface

 

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.

This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies.

An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.

From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless. 

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- 

I'll try not to give it all away, since everyone should read it, and when they do, they will be changed. It's a Faustian story, about a young man who makes a devilish bargain to stay youthful his whole life, and to focus only on things of beauty.  Not in an artistic way, but in a materialistic way. The Gothic setting takes you back to old tyme London with carriages, private clubs, and exquisite manners.

Here are some of sentences and passages that stood out to me:

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.

* * * * *

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world.  They can sit at their ease and gape at the play

* * * * *

"... the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties."

 * * * * *

The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass white daisies were tremulous. 

* * * * *

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air.

* * * * *

"You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages." 

* * * * *

"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to Royalties, and people with Stars and Garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses."

* * * * *

"... none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves." 

* * * * *

"We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty."

* * * * *

"... there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than beauty." 

* * * * *

 There was a rustle of chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. 

 * * * * *

And that's just in Chapter One!

Real Examples of Bestselling Garbage

I've railed before about the crap that is on bookshelves today, the garbage that the American public is hungrily consuming, thinking they are literate, since they are "reading" a book.  But there's hardly anything literary at all about most of these bestsellers.

Adding to that, a friend and colleague pointed me to a hugely successful new self-published author on the scene who is selling hundreds of thousands of copies of her book, and, well, why didn't I just do some of that?

So I looked into Amanda Hocking and her books.  First of all, hitting the USA Today Bestseller list is an accomplishment in itself. She's also a terrific self-promoter: she's a self-professed "obsessive Tweeter" and on ONE of her four blogs last year she did 182 posts! So she is all in when it comes to social media.

I'm pretty sure she does her own social media posts and I 'm also pretty sure that James Joyce or Hemingway or Faulkner or Flaubert would not have time for that.

The genre she writes in is "urban fantasy" and "paranormal adult romance" or whatever you want to call vampire fantasy romance.  It's not something I would ever get into, but there's a big audience for it.  A different audience. Mostly teenagers and young 20's.

It seems that most of her "books" are sold as 99 cent downloads, but some are as much as $2.99.  She stated that she uses iTunes a lot so the pricing made sense to her, and, quite smartly, she has grown her audience, and the "books" are serial, so when she gets a reader they can get another and another and another, reading about the same characters.

 Now, let's take a look at a sample of her writing. I previewed the first book that came up on Amazon.com and here's some from the opening page.

The summer air slid in through the windows, filling the car with the green scent of the park, and the frightening sound of highway traffic.

Not bad.  Some imagery, good rhythm, but perhaps a bit overdone at the end. Let's keep going:

The mid-afternoon sun shined brightly above us. Ordinarily, that sounds like the best time to drive, but sunlight made Jack groggy. He'd already started to yawn.

I'm yawning, in fact I'm nearly puking.

Jack is not like everyone else. I really like him, more than I should. He's attractive in his own right, with dancing blue eyes, perpetually disheveled sandy hair, and flawless tan skin, but he's not what I would call drop dead gorgeous.

Really?  At this point I feel sullied and need to shower after typing those terrible sentences.  This is so bad it sounds like a diary entry by a fawning teen, and it sells like crazy!  Too many adjectives, too trite. I wonder how much effort she put into polishing those colossal sentences.  Did she toil? Push the limits, find exactly the right words and arrange them lyrically with excruciating effort? I doubt it.

So, yeah, you can sell first-draft teen diary entry vampire crap for 99 cents and thousands will buy it.

Sorry, it's not my audience, and it's not exactly the direction I want to take.

Now, let's look at another example, and this is from New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn.  My brother and millions of others apparently read his books. I borrowed "Pursuit of Honor" a counterterrorism blockbuster featuring "elite operative" Mitch Rapp.  Bear in mind he's written a dozen bestsellers and has a contract for at least 10 more.  Glen Beck says it is, "FANTASTIC" and Rush Limbaugh says it is "JUST FABULOUS" and Bill O'Reilly says, "Every American should read this book."

So it must be good, right?

Let's take a looksee.

On page 4 toward the end of the first paragraph:

The other man was a concern, to be sure, but Rapp was not in the habit of killing private citizens simply because they were witnesses...

And the beginning of paragraph three, same page:

Bad form, to be sure, but nothing had risen to the level of outright sedition.

All I can say is that using "to be sure" is trite, boring, and unnecessary, and using it twice on the same page is just plain lazy.  He should be shot.  And he's got an army of editors!  Garbage, pure garbage.

Maybe that was just overlooked.  Surely this "writer" is outstanding, since Dan Brown (Charlatan #1) says, he is "The king of high-concept political intrigue."  So I forced myself to read the next page, which felt like being fed through a tube.

Rapp casually took another drag from the cigarette and watched as the waiter placed two snifters of cognac in front of the men.  A few minutes earlier, Rapp had listened as the other man tried to pass on the after-dinner drink.  Rapp's coworker, however, insisted that they both have a drink.....

Now, with the rain softly pelting his umbrella, Rapp watched the waiter place two snifters on the table.....


Wait a minute!  The waiter placed the snifters down twice?  Four Rapp's in four sentences?  That is just lazy, lazy writing, pure garbage. I could not read another word.


And now, I just feel completely filthy and disgusted and I need a shower.

See why I am not impressed with contemporary best-selling writers?