Mack. Smack that man. He had to have known — had to from all his years of experience — that this stupid and apparently completely untrue blat would not only be picked up by every enemy of freedom, but that it would be remembered, and exaggerated, for the next 20 years. (“Oh yeah, the Bundy Ranch militia people. They were the ones who used women and babies as human shields …”)
Photos show a normal, though elderly, little house. But Annie Dodds quickly discovered why she was able to lease the place sight-unseen for just $500 per year. It had no electrical service, no plumbing (not even an outhouse), rats in the attic, a tree staving in one wall, and a host of other cold, hot, wet, dry, dirty, inconvenient problems.
It was the kind of place where, on a bad day, you might open your sock drawer, briefly think, “I don’t have any socks that color,” then realize you were looking at a rattlesnake coiled atop your footwear.
But Annie loved it.
A Widow’s Walk tells the story of how she — recently widowed, emotionally devastated, dead broke, middle-aged, and equipped only with her own resourcefulness — followed her Backwoods Home-inspired dream of living independently and off-grid.
Okay, I hear the keyboards of the anarchists and cynics charging up now. I suspect I’m even hearing the sound of a few claws being sharpened out there. I suspect Laird’s expecting that.
Nevertheless, some things to note: Kairos is free for the next several days; Laird is more interested in getting it read than getting it sold, so he’s also offering a free .pdf copy to those who don’t have Kindles or Kindle-reading software, and his offer of .pdf copies will continue even after the Amazon price is no longer zero. You can share copies with your Constitutionalist friends or others who believe the fedgov can be changed “within the system.”
I’ve skimmed the book and it’s well-written and informative. Agree or disagree with Laird’s position, he offers some good history and food for thought. (Never mind that I’m one of the claw sharpening cynics myself.)
Where were we now? Oh yes, back on the job in California, shortly after my trip to Ireland. Dealing with writers.
I hope not to disappoint after yesterday’s cliffhanger. But this really is about writers and not about defiance and resistance — though it is possible that my old friend Maurice could make another appearance before this story is done.
—–
Not long after returning, I was making my way down the pile of short-story manuscripts when I ran across another from one of those “two percent” writers — the almost-wonderful ones.
This manuscript told a charming tale, perfect for the kind of magazine we were working on.
This may ramble a bit because it goes both into the ancient past (well, my ancient past) and into places far away. But it begins with Ms Lynn Shepherd, she of the infamous “JK Rowling should get out of the way so no-talent hacks like me have a chance,” HuffPo journalistic fart.
I never told you, but for a very short time, I was a magazine editor. I mean a very short time. We quickly ran out of ways to praise the airline whose magazine it was and the CEO lost interest.
But in the moments it lived, it took fiction submissions. And paid decently for them. Even then, fiction was dying out in magazines. Had been for decades. The golden days with golden pays of the 1920s-40s were long gone. Nobody wanted made-up stuff anymore. They wanted relevance. But we took fiction submissions.
Boy, did we ever. After our birth announcement appeared in a major writers’-market magazine, we took nothin’ but. Two-foot-tall heaps of it.
—–
That stuff broke my heart. It freakin’ broke my heart in ways I’ll never forget.
I usually ignore self-important little whiners (like this one, for instance) who think the world would be a better place — for them — if it would only run on their agenda.
I mean, seriously. Life is just too short. Anyhow, Ayn Rand, for all her personal and literary faults, said all that ever needed to be said about such types in Atlas Shrugged.
Still, it’s fun to watch a master tear self-righteous losers to pieces. To wit: Here’s successful writer Larry Correia savagely fisking a HuffPo whine-a-thon by unsuccessful writer Lynn Shepherd. Shepherd thinks that the world’s most successful writer, JK Rowling, should step aside. Quit writing. Or at least quit publishing any work for grownups. Though Shepherd (generous soul that she is) would still “allow” Rowling to write for personal pleasure, or for children — as long as never an adult-oriented Rowlingian word ever again saw print.
Why? Well, because it’s just unfair that Rowling is doing so fabulously. She needs to stop writing to give other writers a fair chance. And if Rowling really cared about writing, she’d stop doing it.
You go, Larry.
(Harvard Crimson superiority fest in that first link c/o MJR.)
A copy of RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone personally autographed by me to you (or the person of your choice)
A copy of The Mitzvah personally autographed by L. Neil Smith.
The actual 25th-anniversary JPFO pens used to sign your books. (Two books, two pens.)
A JPFO 25th-anniversary tee-shirt featuring a message directed at our First Amendment friends who may not understand how important the Second Amendment is for them.
The package is $72 postpaid and only 25 will be sold.
Neil and I send the books to you directly. JPFO sends the shirt.
