Trump & Co. -- Law Professors File Misconduct Complaint Against Kellyanne Conway

Photo: The Crypt Keeper's Wife  Kellyanne Conway. Photo and cited article from this page.

Sorry for the name-calling, but I'm getting a little tired of the BS. So the latest from this monster:

According to the article cited above, esteemed and established law professors from around the country have filed a complaint against her, which could (and, frankly, should) lead to her disbarment. I mean, at my job, if I proclaimed to the world that a massacre occurred that never did, I'd be in big trouble, so why shouldn't she? And I can't pitch someone's product (or my own) at my job, either.

For those of you not in the know:

The letter, filed with the office that handles misconduct by members of the D.C. Bar, said Conway should be sanctioned for violating government ethics rules and “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation,” the letter says.

The 15 professors, who specialize in legal ethics, cite several incidents, including a television interview in which Conway made the “false statement that President Barack Obama had ‘banned’ Iraqi refugees from coming into the United States for six months following the ‘Bowling Green Massacre,’ ” and the use of her position to endorse Ivanka Trump products.

“We do not file this complaint lightly,” the professors said in their filing. “We believe that, at one time, Ms. Conway, understood her ethical responsibilities as a lawyer and abided by them. But she is currently acting in a way that brings shame upon the legal profession.”

The professors teach at law schools such as Georgetown University Law Center, Yale Law School, Fordham University and Duke University.

Professors at those awesome schools don't rat on each other without cause.

First, you can't use your public position to push products:

Conway was also criticized for using her position during a Feb. 9 interview on Fox News to endorse Ivanka Trump’s fashion products.

“Federal rules on conflicts of interest specifically prohibit using public office ‘for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity,’” the complaint said.

By the way, can you work in the legal profession in D.C. and not be a "suspended" member of the D.C. Bar? From the same article:

The letter was sent to the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, the chief prosecutor for disciplinary matters that involve active or inactive attorneys who are members of the D.C. Bar. Conway is listed as a D.C. Bar member under her maiden name, Kellyanne E. Fitzpatrick, but is a suspended member for not paying her dues, according to the disciplinary filing.

Conway was also responsible for an upsurge in Amazon sales of classic dystopian literature, such as Animal Farm and 1984, because of this infamous utterance:

Since she has been serving as counselor to President Trump, Conway has been caught up in several controversies. Last month, during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” she said the White House had put forth “alternative facts” regarding the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd.

“ ‘Alternative facts’ are not facts at all; they are lies,” the professors said in their filing.

Couldn't have said that better myself.

Black Chaos 2 and "The Zombie's Lament" Now Available!

 

Black Chaos II is on the way!  You can get my story--"The Zombie's Lament"--and 24 other great zombie stories for just $4.99 on Kindle and other devices.
 

The e-book versions are currently up for pre-order at Smashwords and Amazon. The print edition also will be available directly from Big Pulp and through any bookstore.  Links to those will follow.

 

Please support me by sharing this message and the links on your blog or Facebook page.  Thanks!

 

The premise of my story: It's about a guy who loses the love of his life, gets bitten in the face by a zombie, and tries to apologize to his beloved before he turns--or dies. 

  

History's Lost Treasures by Eric Chaline

Photo: The book's cover, from its Amazon page.

The second-to-last book I read in 2014 was this extremely interesting and informative book probably best read on The Throne, especially since each chapter is two pages long, max.  But the articles can teach the reader quite a bit about history, which the author, who I've never heard of, clearly knows thoroughly.  He writes about people, events and things very casually, as if he's so familiar with them that he forgets others may not be.
 
This could've led to pedantic and professorial prose, but it never does.  In fact, Chaline clearly took great pains to make this as conversational as possible, sometimes to a fault.  At points it becomes too author-intrusion opinionated.  At others, it becomes a bit pedestrian, like the authors' bios at the back of YA books that try too hard to connect to the YA reader.  The kids are much more sophisticated than that, I assure you; similarly, the author here at times forgets that his audience might be a little more sophisticated than he thinks.
 
I bought this in the remainder bin (for less than seven bucks), and I had to list this title manually on Goodreads (where you'll find my reviews for dozens of books), so take those for what they're worth.
 
All that notwithstanding, this is, as I mentioned, a very interesting and informative book that reads like it was written by scholarly-type on a scholarly-type website, and it probably is somewhere.  I'll guess you can find it on Amazon for a few pennies. (Not that I'm in favor of the public doing that, as the author generally loses out.)
 
Lost treasures (some found, some not) include:

Wondrous burial goods: Tutankhamun's death mask • A real crock of gold: The treasure of Villena • Sunken plunder: The Nuestra Señora de Atocha • Religious rarities: The unique Jain bronzes of Chausa • Stolen artworks: The missing van Gogh paintings • Dazzling gems: The La Peregrina Pearl

No matter how you get a copy, you should do so, even if you read it in small doses, in the room I mentioned above.  There's no sin in that.

Dark Visions, Vol. 1--Memorably Good (and Short) Horror Stories

Photo: book's cover, from beforeitsnews.com


If you like horror, and you like short stories, go get a copy of Dark Visions 1: A Collection of Modern Horror, an anthology of original short stories, edited by Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson.  It's available on Amazon, here.  A few notes about a couple of the stories to show you why it's so good:

--Mister Pockets, by NYT bestselling author and multiple Stoker Award-winner Jonathan Maberry.

Very effective short story about a "twelve-year old fat kid" who is barely beginning to understand his place in the world, and where others think his place is.  His place at present is in a town that's just recovering from The Trouble.  Nobody talks about it, but it happened, and it may be happening again.  What's The Trouble?  Well, suffice it to say that the kid goes one-on-one with a very pretty and very alluring vampire-like thing, and he would've been done for had he not earlier given a candy bar to a strange-smiling homeless man, nicknamed [see title].  (Great title, by the way.)

Maberry may be one of the more successful horror writers I've not heard of before.  The short author bio before the story lists an unbelievable amount of writing this man has been paid for since 1978.  If that sounds a little like envy on my part, it's because it is.

The Weight of Paradise by Jeff Hemenway

Creepy story about scientist-wannabes who find a cure for cancer.  By doing so, the cured become immortal.  But, as it turns out, forever comes for a price, and it's painful.  If you're familiar with the genre, you've seen this sort of morality tale before, but not as well-done as this.  It's a horror tale with the wistful sadness of some of Jack Ketchum's short stories.  That's a good thing.

Incidentally, it's always cool to see that a professional  author has been published in the same magazines as you.  In this case, Hemenway's been in Big Pulp, the same good folks who recently purchased the rights to my story, "The Zombie's Lament."  Another author, later in the collection, will soon be published in Space and Time, as I was.  Cool deal, man.  Good for the old ego.

The Troll by Jonathan Balog

A 20-page story that reads like 10, which is one of the things I look for in a slightly-longer short story.  (I like my short stories short--10 pages or fewer--and I tend to write very short ones, too.)  Anyway, the troll of the story looks more like a metrosexual pimp, but what he tells the 12-year old narrator to do is a bit more.  Though he does pimp the kid out, if I may be so bold.  The troll is quite a bit like Pennywise the Clown, except when the story's done, the reader may wonder who the real troll was--the troll, or the narrator?  A good study of adolescent evil.  Very well-written, and very quickly read.

Delicate Spaces by Brian Fatah Steele

Perhaps my favorite so far in this collection.  A group of paranormal researchers answer a dare for free rooming at a hotel that wants to drum up business, hoping they'll stay longer.  Very realistic dialogue and action make the reader feel like he's observing the middle of something, just being dropped right in there.  What they see before they're about to leave will catch the reader breathless.  Very professionally written and described; you'll feel this frightening incident could actually happen.

There are 13 stories in all, and there's a lot to like here.  So, suffice it to say, if you like your horror in small pieces, you'll like this book as much as I did.  Again, it's available here at Amazon.  The Kindle is only $3.99, and a new paperback starts at $11.94.  It's worth it.

With All Due Respect--My JOYLAND Book Review, Out Now

Photo: Magazine cover of All Due Respect, where you'll find my review of Stephen King's Joyland.

The good people at With All Due Respect Magazine have published my review of Stephen King's Joyland.  It's available right now at this link, and soon in print as well.

126 pages of original hard-boiled crime noir, it's only $2.99 on Kindle.

From its Amazon page:

All Due Respect is back with thriller author Owen Laukkanen, whose latest book, Kill Fee, is due out in March. We've got some seriously dark stories from CS DeWildt, David Siddall, Joseph Rubas, Eric Beetner, Liam Sweeny, and Scott Adlerberg. And we continue our quest to review every Hard Case Crime book. If you like your fiction hardboiled/noir, this is your magazine.

Praise for All Due Respect:

"All Due Respect... is full of bars and beatings, guns and grifters, not necessarily the kind of crime to cozy up with by the fire, unless it's one of those burning cars on the side of the road." -- David James Keaton, author of Fish Bites Cop

"This is perhaps the best collection of noir and crime short stories I’ve come across." -- Big Al's Books and Pals.

So there you are.  This is good stuff.  For just $2.99, please give it a shot.  Leave a comment, let me know what you thought.   

Dark (Horror) Fiction Collection--Little Visible Delight

I was lucky enough to be asked to take a look at a collection of short stories, all in the horror genre, by one of the editors of the book and a member, like me, of the Horror Writers Association of America. (Check out the cool icon on the right side of my blog.)

For the collection: Here's the Amazon link.

And here's a little snippet:

"A new anthology of original dark fiction edited by S.P. Miskowski and Kate Jonez, Little Visible Delight was published by Omnium Gatherum Media on December 6, 2013."

And a short description:

"Often the most powerful and moving stories are generated by writers who return time and again to a particular idea, theme, or image. Obsession in a writer's imagination can lead to accomplishment or to self-destruction. Consider Poe and his pale, dead bride; his fascination with confinement and mortality; his illness and premature death. Or Flannery O'Connor's far less soul-crushing fondness for peacocks. Some writers pay a high price for their obsessions, while others maintain a crucial distance. Whichever the case, obsessions can produce compelling fiction.

Little Visible Delight is an anthology of original stories in which eleven authors of dark fiction explore some their most intimate, writerly obsessions."

Sounds cool, right?  Especially if you're into this genre, like I am.  (Though I hadn't known about O'Connor fondness for peacocks.)  So I thought I'd review a few of the short stories in the collection, over a few blog entries.  This will be a little challenging, because when I like a book, I want other people to read it, but if I write too much about the stories in the book, and give too much away, why would you read them?  So I'm going to err (perhaps too much) on the side of caution, hopefully.  Suffice it to say, if I write about the story at all, I liked it.

I got the permission of one of the editors, so here's a review of the first two stories:

"The Receiver of Tales"

Very well-written, atmospheric, moody tale with a few images that will stay with you.  The writing is so lyrical, and yet so exact (rare for lyricism), and the ending is so well-conceived, that I read it twice.  It's sort of got one ending, when the woman fully realizes her predicament, and then another ending, when she does something about it.  This is a nice extended metaphor about the obsession writers have of writing--though I have to say that my stories are mostly my stories.  But that's just me.  (Enough about me.  What do you think about me?)

One of the few short stories I've ever read twice.  Outside of college classes, that is.

"Needs Must When the Devil Drives"

Never heard of this phrase before, though I like the rhythm of it.  I'll leave the connection between the phrase and the story alone.  You'll have to buy the book!  (Sorry.)  Anyway, this is a well-written time-travel story narrated by a blase, but well-voiced, main character.  It was a nice take on time-travel stories where someone has to go back to kill someone in order to create (or un-create) the future.  It mostly concerns what a philosophy professor once called "The Hitler Paradox."  It goes something like this: Would you go back in time to shoot Hitler before he came to power?  How about if you could only go back in time and meet him when he was just four years old?  And holding a Teddy Bear?  Could you kill him?  You get the idea.

In this one, the main character has to go back in time to kill someone very dear to him: Himself.

Clever story.

That's it for now.  These two stories are well worth the price of the collection, just for themselves.  If this sounds interesting to you, check out these links:

A Goodreads link.

The publisher's link.

And, again, the Amazon link. 

Stephen King's Blockade Billy / Morality: Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon

Photo: The book's hard cover, from bookdepository.com

The small hardcover of Stephen King’s Blockade Billy / Morality is handsome to hold and to look at, and it looks different than any of his other actual physical books.  The two stories inside are the same: very different than usual for him.  Not bad, exactly; just different.  But to compare them to his other works—and their quality—is like comparing apples to oranges.  There simply is no comparison.

"Blockade Billy" is about 80 pages long; "Morality" checks in at about 50.  They're both written in an oddly (for King) distant tone.  I wonder at that writing choice, especially for the second story, because it seems like he could have done more with them if he'd focused his lens a little more upon them.  "Morality," especially, could have gone places if he'd created actual scenes from the man's and woman's POV, rather than just tell the story in a detached, long distance way.  It's like he wanted to tell the stories without focusing on them too much.  The stories aren't bad, exactly, because of this; it's just that they could have been better.

The first story was published in a (very) limited edition previous to this.  The second story was previously published in Esquire, which seems right.  It's definitely an Esquire type of story--and a bit of a Playboy story, as well.  King's been published in The New Yorker and in Esquire recently.  He's always been mainstream, of course, though now he seems to be more of a mainstream writer for mainstream literary magazines, which is quite new for him.  You can add his column in Entertainment Weekly to this phase, too.  I don't know quite what to make of it, if anything.  I suppose the tremendous (and well-deserved) success of On Writing opened these doors for him.

Lastly, something needs to be said for the quality of stories that King gives to limited only editions.  All of his novels, of course, come in limited editions--signed, gold-plated, leather-bound with ornate boxes; you name it, he's got it going on--but some, such as this, come in editions that are only limited.  Even previously-published stories such as these are usually later published in mass-market hardcovers and paperbacks.  Stories of this length would be packaged with two others and sold in a book of four, like Different Seasons, or Four Past Midnight.  Why weren't these, and others like these?  (I'm thinking of the Hard Case paperbacks recently reviewed.)  I don't know, exactly, but I have to assume it's because he felt that they weren't worthy of such packaging and selling.  Are these two worthy?  I don't know that, either.  But I'm going to say No.  I think that because, as I mentioned, King himself seems to have just sort of let these go.  You have to sell what you write, of course, and they'll sell because King wrote them.  So you sell them to Esquire, or a (very) limited edition, and then you package them into a book.  But then why not mass market that book?  I come back to how he wrote them: tells more than shows; no exactly focused scenes in either story, exactly.  The first one is a dramatic monologue (a la Dolores Claiborne) told to Stephen King himself.  Huh?  This conceit is left completely unexplained.  I feel that he wrote them, and sort of shrugged, and didn't know what to do with them.  Then someone called him, some limited edition publisher, and asked him if he had anything.  He did.  Then Esquire called and asked the same thing.  And then, later, when the rights reverted back to him, he realized that they didn't go together with any other two longer short stories (fifty pages isn't quite a novella, in my opinion, though eighty pages is), and so he packaged them together for another limited edition publisher, since I feel he felt them sort of unworthy of mass market sales.  I mean, can you package a baseball meets In Cold Blood story with anything else?  How about an Indecent Proposal meets sadomasochistic behavior story?  Nope, not so much.

Well, whatever.  Stephen King fans will like these two stories.  Baseball fans will like the first one, as a certain 40s or 50s era game is brought back, though the players described seem more 1890s to 1910s to me.  Fans who've read his Esquire and New Yorker pieces will like the second one--and I read somewhere that it's won some awards somewhere.  This was the last of his (relatively normally published; not-so-limited) books that I didn't have, and I was annoyed because I remember seeing this at Barnes & Noble when it was released for (seemingly) a few days.  I didn't buy it because I was in some sort of mood; I remember thinking that a baseball story didn't belong in the same book as an S&M sort of story, and I remember thinking that some kid would buy it for the baseball story, and then be shocked out of his pants by the second story.  I was nuts at the time, of course.  I went back to the store, and they didn't have it anymore, of course.  But they could order it for me for $25.  Um, no.  So I went to my local used bookstore.  Nada.  So then, belatedly and with a sigh, I went to Amazon (which you should never do when buying a book because the author usually won't see a cut of it) and bought a brand new, never opened copy, delivered to my door, for a total of $11.  I hated to do it, but I can't afford to pay $14 more, not including tax and shipping, from the bookstore.

So I'll leave this rambling review with that.  I had to buy a limited edition book, from an even more limited edition run before it, from Amazon, because the bookstore charged way too much (it was a bit less on BN.com, but nowhere close to what Amazon had it for) and because the limited edition (limited, for whatever reason) didn't produce enough copies for a used bookstore to have a realistic chance to get it.  I know this is bad, and that I would hate it if people bought by books on Amazon for a penny, rather than from the bookstore for the real price, because I wouldn't see a cut of it at all, and it would be literally be taking money out of my pocket.  And that sucks, but in the same exact position, I'd have to do it again.

Would you?

Published Poem Now Available

Photo: Book cover of the anthology that contains my recently-sold poem, "An Old Man."

You'll find it in this anthology of "poems of hope throughout the world."  This recent write-up says it better:

We are delighted to announce that “Hope Springs A Turtle” is now available to order from Amazon or your favourite bookshops. Thank you for taking part in this project, we are delighted with the unique beauty and inspirational quality of this anthology.This anthology is an eclectic collection of beautiful photographs and inspiring poetry from all over the planet,  proving that hope is the power that unites everyone.

This book is an ideal gift for the young and old showing everybody the importance and joy that hope brings.

10% of all profits goes to support Mind U.K., a mental health charity in the United Kingdom.

Thanks for reading.  Sorry for the unabashed plug!  An actual blog entry will come tomorrow.  (I'm an unapologetic tool.  But at least some of it's for a good charity.  Hell, I've had many days when I've done much less.) 

Anyway, click here for the printed book and for the e-book.

Nonfiction Piece Published Now

 photo: Jackson the Greyhound, happy to be out for a walk

A short nonfiction piece, titled "Someone to Come Home to," about how my life improved when I adopted a greyhound, was published recently in an anthology, now available on Amazon at this link.  If you're interested in real stories about how to manage those anxieties that life can often throw at you, check it out.

And due to my spec. fiction sale, I've been accepted as a member of the Horror Writers Association.  (Besides our first name, it's probably the only thing that Stephen King and I have in common.)  Please click on the icon to the right and check them out!

If you feel like commenting about the piece, please do so.  Thanks!

Becoming A Writer--Dorothea Brande

Photo--The book's page on Amazon (obviously).

Like John Gardiner's book, The Art of Fiction, this one is very helpful because of its honest directness and simplicity.  An easy read, it sounds like she's in the room, talking only to you.  An important work because it dispels advice on technique and instead gives bare-bones advice about who writers are and what they must essentially do.  In essence, she advises how to get the butt in the chair, and she tells you what to do in order to keep it there and to be productive.  A large part self-help, it encourages the writer to have a positive, meditative and courageous mindset before you even sit down to type.

Published in 1934, it was unique in its day, and in this one, because of how it eschews technique in favor of mental and psychological stimulation.  Her bottom-line: If you can't sit down consistently to write, you're not a writer and you're better off finding another avenue to express yourself.  As John Gardner wrote a bit later: "Writers write."  Stephen King's book says essentially the same thing, but is even better in a way because he also gives you several memoir-anecdotes and some practical advice on what to do once your butt is consistently in the chair and once you are consistently typing.

This book was written two years before what could be considered its companion book: Wake Up and Live!, which sold even better in its day, over 2,000,000 copies.  Both are recommended, as is Stephen King's On Writing and John Gardner's book.  King's is by far the longest (of course) and they're all indispensable.  Buy those, and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and you won't need anything else to help you to sit your butt down and write.  Re-reading any (or all) of them during blah times is highly recommended, too.

Anita Diamant's Last Days of Dogtown and Mary Karr's Poetry

I'm about halfway through this one.  It's a slippery smooth read written solely in 3rd person limited as it follows its characters.  Essentially a character study as it follows them, using what scant information we have to ground the otherwise unknown characters.  We know the names, Wharf's suicide, the almost-definite whoring of some of the women, the definite drunkenness of many of the townspeople, the drudgery and dissolution of the people and the locale.  Forever in the background, but as much a character as the actual characters, is the isolation, the barren and rocky land, the draw of the area to people who are different, or down on their luck, or just plain unlucky or destitute.  I'm not a fan of the writing style, though this is a good read and Diamant gets away with it, because it's essentially a plotless aggregate of chapters that gasps in spurts of time, without a central mystery, story, or anything else to ground it.  The chapters could be separate short stories with usually no, or at times a little, to hold them together.  Maybe this one is grounded in a central theme, which is that of isolation and destitution.  In other words, the mystery isn't why the place became a ghost town, but is instead a mystery of why they stayed for so long to begin with.  This book is available on Amazon for less than two bucks.  I also bought Mary Karr's fourth book of poems, Sinners Are Welcome, on Amazon for almost the same price.  Recommended.  The language is direct, like her memoirs, and surprisingly poetically unpoetic.

The Power of the Internet

Been away for awhile again.  Writing, don't you know.  And the business end has been giving me...well, the business end.  Hope your holidays have gone well, whoever you are.  Now for a few quick things:

--I recently described my writing process this way:

"I let the whole thing fester for awhile--unless it's just suddenly springs on me and I MUST write it down--and then I just write and write and look at whatever comes out. Sometimes I get a lot in a linear fashion; sometimes I get a lot of fragments; sometimes I get the beginning; sometimes the ending. Whatever comes, comes, and then I have to sort it all out. Lately I've been getting fragments and multiple POVs. Cursing was linear, and "Hide the Weird" was, too. A couple of other short stories were. But not too often these days. I often, but not always, try and get down the very beginning, the very end, and hopefully the very middle. Somewhere in all this, at the editing and re-re-re-re-re-editing stage, I fill out an outline of what I've got, to make sure it all makes sense, and to plug in any very obvious holes. By that time, it's been well paved, and I see what I've got, and then I edit again, finish, etc. No strict formula for writing for me. Just go get 'em."

While this is a very accurate description of my writing method, it strikes me as a little all over the place.  Is this typical?  If you're a writer, please comment or send me an email and let me know.  Thanks!


--I recently responded to one of my Goodreads threads, one that asks if there's any book you've been thinking of lately that you remember a bit, but some of it is fuzzy, and you can't remember the title, and you've been looking for the book awhile without success.  You respond to this thread, giving as much information as you can, and the hundreds?  thousands? of Goodreads members who are game try to figure the book out for you.  So I did this about a book I've been thinking about for years, one I read when I was maybe 11, and it made a big impression on me, but I couldn't remember the title at all.  I'd been looking for it at yard sales, library sales, indie bookstores, etc.  I stumped the experts at first, but then someone nailed it!  It's called "The Tunnel to Yesterday."  So I ordered it from Amazon, cost maybe $6 total to ship to my door (free delivery!) and I just finished reading it earlier today.


Now that's the power of the internet.


And, by the way, if I don't get another chance to say so, Happy New Year everybody!!!