I'm In Good Company!

– In an ocean of self-published titles, two questions surface: How can readers find quality e-books, and how can authors of quality e-books find readers?

Before Amazon’s Kindle changed the face of electronic publishing, in 2006, 51,237 self-published titles were printed as physical books, according to the data company Bowker. Last year, Bowker estimated that more than 300,000 self-published titles were issued in either print or digital form.

How can readers sift through hundreds of thousands of self-published titles to find quality e-books that will be worth their investment of money and time?

Author collectives such as the recently launched “Killer Thrillers” provide one answer. All 22 Killer Thrillers members are award-winning, bestselling, and internationally published thriller authors committed to bringing high standards and professional quality to their self-published works.

Of the 163 self-published titles currently featured on the Killer Thrillers website, many first appeared in print. Others are original e-books. All are written by talented, experienced thriller authors who’ve proven they know how to tell a ripper of a story by winning major awards, becoming regional, national, and international bestselling authors, and seeing their novels translated and published in other countries. Some of the Killer Thrillers titles have also been optioned for television and film.

New York Times bestselling author David Morrell, christened “the father of the modern action novel” for his iconic creation, John Rambo, lists 15 self-published e-books on the Killer Thrillers website including First Blood, the title that introduced the world to John Rambo, The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for a television mini-series, and his other Rambo books.

“I'm in the process of archiving my entire 40-year output of novels, essays, short stories, and non-fiction works as e-publications,” Morrell says. “E-books are wonderful for authors. No more out-of-print titles.”

Killer Thrillers authors include Brett Battles, Raymond Benson, Sean Black, Robert Gregory Browne, Blake Crouch, Karen Dionne, Timothy Hallinan, Katia Lief, CJ Lyons, Bob Mayer, Grant McKenzie, David Morrell, Boyd Morrison, J.F. Penn, Keith Raffel, J.D. Rhoades, Jeremy Robinson, L.J. Sellers, Zoë Sharp, Alexandra Sokoloff, Mark Terry and F. Paul Wilson.

http://www.killer-thrillers.com

Sane Republicans: Rare and Endangered, But They Do Exist

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As some of you may have noticed, one of my interests is in finding and cataloguing a rare breed known as the Sane Republican. Alas, not only is it a rare breed, it’s getting rarer.

They’re being hunted to near extinction by other species such as the Raging Right-Winged Moonbat and the Red-Faced Red-State Howler Monkey. Yet, this plucky species continues to live on, and can be sighted if you’re paying attention.

Let’s start by heading to upstate New York, where first-term Republican Congressman Richard Hanna told The Syracuse Post Standard that he was “frustrated” by how much “we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes at this point in history.”

As a specific example, Hanna mentioned the demand of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Insane Asylum) and other right-wingers that Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, be investigated for Islamic extremist ties, not for any action of hers, but because some of her family members were “connected” (in ways not specified by Bachmann) to “Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.”

Hanna responded to this bit of neo-McCarthyism by noting that “we render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides.”

Normally, such reasonable statements, especially as they relate to Congresswoman Crazy Eyes, would be the equivalent of painting a set of cross hairs on your forehead. But Hanna survived a challenge from a candidate favored by the tea party (remember them?) back in June. It remains to be seen what will happen when he faces Democrat Dan Lamb in November.

Next let’s head down to Utah, aka the Beehive State, the only state I know of that has its own official state firearm (the Browning M1911 automatic pistol). Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, recently responded to an Obama administration proposal to relax some of the federal work requirements for welfare recipients for states who wished to try their own projects. The requirements for participation were that state plans (a) get more people working and (b) produce verifiable results.

Herbert did not, however, repeat the Romney administration’s repeatedly refuted falsehood that the proposal “gutted” work requirements, and would lead to people just “sitting around and getting a welfare check.”

You’d think giving states greater flexibility in implementing federal programs would be regarded as a good thing by Republicans. But the Romneyites weren’t going to miss a chance to throw a little race-baiting — OK, a lot of race-baiting — into the campaign by resurrecting the well-worn specter of the lazy “welfare queen” from the Reagan years, and never mind the fact that such an accusation was a blatant lie.

Herbert, on the other hand, is trying to get stuff done. He told The Huffington Post that “the idea of flexibility is something that all states want to have,” and that his own state had asked for one of the waivers.

He disagrees with the administration’s method of implementation, contending that it has to be done through Congress, but that’s actually a reasonable argument to have, in contrast with the hysterical ranting of a proven lie, which is what RomneyCorp has chosen.

Also in the Beehive State, we find Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. When President Obama announced, to howls of rage from the right, that he’d no longer be using federal resources to deport children of illegal immigrants if they met certain conditions, Shurtleff called it “clearly within the president’s power” and pronounced himself “pleased” with the decision.

“Law enforcement makes decisions based on the resources available to them,” Shurtleff said. “The administration is saying, ‘Here’s a group we could be spending our resources going after, but why? They’re Americans, they see themselves as Americans, they love this country.” Exactly.

There are others, of course. But sadly, the Republican herd often drives the moderates and even the mildly sane out of the fold, like former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who’ll be speaking at the Democratic Convention.

Because, you see, there’s a word for what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The word is “Democrats.” A goodly number of current Democratic positions, including the Affordable Care Act, were ideas from the Republican Party, before it completely lost its mind.

If you’re a moderate Republican who doesn’t feel at home in the GOP anymore, you might consider jumping ship. And if that suggestion fills you with scorn or apoplectic rage, you’re not one of the people I was talking to.

QOTD: You Built It All Yourself, Huh?

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thomas Paine, Founding Father

h/t to commenter The Other Chuck at Balloon Juice

Dirtiest Campaign Ever? Really?

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Have you ever noticed how, about this time of every election year, the chattering and scribbling classes erupt in a frenzy of clutching their pearls, fanning themselves, and looking for the nearest fainting couch, because "Oh, mah stars, this is the nastiest, most divisive campaign evah!"

It happened in 1988. It happened again in 1992. And in 1996. And 2000, 2004, and 2008. Every single one of those campaigns was decried by pundits and wounded pols crying foul as "the most negative," "most divisive" or "dirtiest" in history.

Poppycock. Poppycock and balderdash. Also, codswallop. As former Obama and Clinton campaign aide Blake Zeff points out in a recent article in the online journal Buzzfeed, "Not only is this not the most negative campaign ever - it's not the most negative campaign of your lifetime, unless you happen to be 3 years old."

Don't believe me? Return with me, friends, in the Wayback Machine to the thrilling days of yesteryear. Specifically, to the year 1800, when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams found themselves pitted against one another in a nasty fight for the presidency and, like every election before or since, for the future of the nation.

Jefferson's campaign got the ball rolling, saying Adams had a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

Adams' men wasted no time in firing back, warning that if Jefferson was elected, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest would be openly practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes." They also called Jefferson an "atheist, mountebank, trickster, and Francomaniac."

Fast forward to 1872, when Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the Union, was opposed by New York Congressman and former newspaper editor Horace Greeley. Greeley's supporters called the Grant administration "the crowning point of governmental wickedness."

Grant, however, had the backing of the nation's wealthiest men, and poor Greeley was saddled with a running mate with a drinking problem so bad that at one campaign picnic, he got plastered and tried to butter a watermelon. Say what you like about Joe Biden, he never pulled a gaffe that big. Too bad they didn't have YouTube.

In the 1884 election, supporters of James Blaine accused Grover Cleveland of fathering an illegitimate child with the taunt "Ma! Ma! Where's My Pa?" to which Cleveland supporters shot back, "Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!" Cleveland supporters also had a chant of their own: "Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!"

I'm not sure why they used "continental." "Monumental" would have fit and made more sense. But I'm sure they had their reasons.

The advent of mass media, television in particular, gave negative campaigning a truly visceral wallop. Among the first to gather controversy was Lyndon Johnson's infamous "Daisy" ad, which featured an adorable little girl picking daisies in a field. When she gets to "10," a metallic voice starts a countdown. The girl looks up in puzzlement just as the count reaches zero, at which point we see an image of a mushroom cloud.

The message is clear: If you vote for Goldwater, in the words of Johnson's voiceover, "we must die" in a nuclear war.

Interestingly, the ad, like the infamous "Mitt Romney killed my wife" ad by a pro-Obama Super PAC, only ran once on actual TV, but the controversy swirling around it gave it millions worth of dollars in free air time.

In recent years, we've had ads which implied that Michael Dukakis was responsible for the rape and armed robbery of a Maryland couple (1988). We've had ads accusing a decorated veteran of lying about his war record (2004). We've been told a candidate would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign (2008).

And in every one of those years, someone's claimed that "this is the nastiest campaign ever." Well, I won't believe that until someone pulls a Thomas Jefferson and calls Mitt Romney or Barack Obama a hermaphrodite. Frankly, my biggest problem with modern negative campaigning is that it lacks that kind of style.

Ryan: Norman Schwarzkopf or G.A. Custer?

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In Winston Churchill's memoir of the Second World War, he relates his reaction to the news that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor: "I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."

When I heard the news that Mitt Romney had selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, I thought Barack Obama must have done the same.

Because, while the Rabid Right may be patting themselves on the back and admiring the "bold stroke" of choosing Ryan, and the Beltway pundits like to wax rhapsodic over Ryan's "gutsy" budget plan, I can think of nothing Etch A Sketch Romney could have done that's more certain to ensure his eventual defeat.

You know how I know Ryan is a terrible pick? One of his biggest backers was the affable boob Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, who's frequently seen grinning his way across your TV screen and spouting nonsense, a veritable fountain of specious claptrap The two things Kristol's most famous for urging the GOP to embrace are Sarah Palin and the Iraq War, which he said would "pay for itself." How'd those work out?

Kristol gets props from his buddies in the Beltway media for urging the Republicans to be "bolder" and more "ambitious," as commentator Dylan Byers wrote in Politico. But in reality, he's like the half-bright, overly aggressive major general who's always urging some lunatic charge into the enemy guns that gets a lot of his men killed.

Insiders have been reporting for some time now that the Obama campaign had been trying to tie Romney to Ryan's proposed budget plans. Because here's the thing: Once people find out what's actually in the budget, it's highly unpopular, particularly his proposal to give more huge tax breaks to millionaires and pay for it by turning Medicare into a "voucher" system, where seniors would get coupons to buy insurance from private insurers.

A Washington Post/Kaiser Foundation poll this month asked people whether they favored keeping the current structure of Medicare, or going to a system "in which the government guarantees each senior a fixed amount of money to help them purchase coverage either from traditional Medicare or from a list of private health plans." Fifty-eight percent rejected the change.

You can see why, if you think about it. Given the amount of confusion and the grumbling of senior citizens over trying to choose between the various options in George Dubbya's budget-busting Medicare Part D plan (which Ryan voted for, by the way), I find it unlikely that they're going to welcome the fun and excitement of haggling with dozens of insurance companies over their coverage.

This is especially true since repealing the Affordable Care Act (which Ryan supports) means the insurance companies will once more be free to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. How many people do you know over 65 who don't have some kind of pre-existing condition?

It gets worse when you look at the rest of the plan. A recent Democracy Corps survey showed that "President Obama's lead against Romney more than doubles when the election is framed as a choice between the two candidates' positions on the Ryan budget - particularly its impact on the most vulnerable." And if the Obama campaign has shown one thing recently, it's that they know how to define an opponent and his positions.

You want to know how bad it gets for the Ryan plan? According to a report in The New York Times, when the pro-Obama SuperPac Priorities USA (they of the infamous "Bain Capital Killed My Wife" ad) was doing focus groups to determine what tack to take, they found that attacks on the Ryan budget plan and Romney's support of it didn't do all that well.

First because no one really knew anything about Ryan or what was in the plan, and second, because once people heard that it called for "ending Medicare as we know it" while giving bigger tax breaks to millionaires, "they refused to believe any politician would do such a thing."

Well, now they're going to hear about the plan, right from the blue-eyed horse's mouth, and the evidence is pretty clear that they're not going to like it at all. Bill Kristol and the Raging Right may think Romney's "boldness" in picking Ryan makes him into Gen. Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf.

In reality, it may turn out to be more like Custer - except this time, Custer spent the day before Little Big Horn handing out quivers full of arrows for the Indians to shoot him with.

GUESS WHO SAID IT?

'The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends."