Broken Shield Is LIVE!

 If you're one of the few people I know who hasn't heard this announcement already, BROKEN SHIELD, my new e-book for Kindle, is now available. More formats, including print, will be forthcoming.

Cool cover, no? It's by my friend Robert Gregory Browne.

Here's the description:

Chief Deputy Tim Buckthorn takes center stage in this scorching sequel to the bestselling BREAKING COVER.

Buckthorn and his beloved hometown of Pine Lake thought they'd seen the last of FBI agent Tony Wolf. But when evidence of a kidnapping literally falls from the sky, Wolf returns to assist in the search for an abducted young girl.

Buckthorn, Wolf, and brilliant FBI prodigy Leila Dushane race against the clock to piece the clues together. When the evil they find follows them home, Pine Lake once again suffers terrible tragedy at the hands of violent and lawless men. Tim Buckthorn, who's lived his life as a sworn officer of the law, will have to cross every line he ever knew on a quest to protect the people and the place he loves.

"I loved this emotionally riveting collision of good and evil in a small Southern town. Rhoades always melds action, character and suspense into a seamless and unforgettable ride."-Alexandra Sokoloff, award-winning author of THE HARROWING and the Huntress Series

“A blistering follow-up to BREAKING COVER. The prose is fast and smart, the pace frantic and the characters driven, dangerous and yet full of heart. BROKEN SHIELD reaffirms JD Rhoades’ position as the king of redneck noir.” -Zoë Sharp, author of the Charlie Fox crime thriller series

"J.D. Rhoades introduced Tim Buckthorn in Breaking Cover. Now, in the searing prose of Broken Shield, Rhoades shows us he has created a character who can stand tall alongside Jack Reacher and Harry Bosch."-Keith Raffel, bestselling author of DOT DEAD, DROP BY DROP, and A FINE AND DANGEROUS SEASON

Bearing False Twitness

Latest Newspaper Column:

Steve Bouser's columns don't usually cause me alarm, but the one he wrote for this past Wednesday's paper, about the number of people getting more and more of their news from social media, certainly did.

This is not because I dislike or fear Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the like. Truth be told, I probably spend a lot more time on those things than I should.

(In my defense, I first got on Facebook because my literary agent at the time told me all the other writers were doing it, and it was a cheap and easy way to present myself to my audience. So now, a few years and 5,000 Facebook friends later, I justify the time wasted - sorry, spent - by claiming I'm marketing. A flimsy rationalization, but it's the only one I have.)

No, it's not an aversion to social media that alarms me when I hear that 19 percent of all Americans, and a whopping 33 percent of those under 30, get some or all of their news from social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I'm alarmed because I know those networks so well. I know them well enough not to trust them.

Twitter in particular is a classic example of the old maxim that you can determine the collective IQ of a group by taking the IQ of the dumbest person in it, and dividing it by the number of people in the group.

Not that there aren't some bright and fascinating people on Twitter. I "follow" very smart folks like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, talented ones like writers John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman, and entertaining ones like actress and geek-goddess Felicia Day. A lot of my far-flung cadre of friends in the writing business are on Twitter, and an evening spent tweeting back and forth with them is like being present at a great literary cocktail party. Except at a cocktail party, I'm usually dressed. Usually. There was that time in Milwaukee ... never mind.

But Twitter is also full of idiots, crackpots and the chronically ignorant. Twitter is the place where, after it was revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers were from Chechnya, thousands of calls went up for the U.S. to start bombing ... the Czech Republic.

So many, in fact, that the Czech ambassador actually had to issue a statement on the embassy website, noting "in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding" and reminding Americans that "the Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities - the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation."

He did not add "you freaking imbeciles," which is what I would have done. This is probably why I'm not an ambassador.

By the way, other tweets and Facebook posts claiming that failed VP candidate and reality TV star Sarah Palin was one of those calling for an invasion of the Czech Republic and "other Arab countries" turned out to be untrue was well. Those tweets linked to a joke "story" in the online satirical newspaper The Daily Currant.

Perhaps more ominously, Twitter in particular has shown itself to be highly vulnerable to hacking and the hijacking of supposedly reliable news sources to spread misinformation by pranksters or more serious political dirty tricksters.

Just last week, the Associated Press Twitter account was taken over by hackers who posted that a bomb had gone off at the White House and that President Obama had been injured. Some tweeters immediately cried "shenanigans,", and AP took the account down quickly, but not before the Dow Jones Industrial average plunged 140 points in the space of a few minutes.

A group calling itself the "Syrian Electronic Army" claimed responsibility for the hack, but one can't help but wonder if perhaps some clever stock speculator was doing some short selling before having a hacker buddy send the Dow into a spin. But that's just the way my mind works after years of reading conspiracy thrillers.

As we discussed last week, you can't always trust the TV news to bring you the latest facts, since they've now collectively decided that passing on unconfirmed and often anonymous "reports" (aka rumors, conjectures and general BS) is a substitute for actual journalism. But trusting social media is even riskier.

So what are we to do? Well, my advice is to look at a lot of different sources. Also, never believe the first thing you read or hear. Skepticism isn't a perfect system, but it'll have to do.

Get It Now, Get It First, Get It Wrong, Redux

Latest Newspaper Column:

One of the most aggravating features of our multi-network, Twitter-driven, twenty-four-hour news cycle is something that invariably happens in the wake of a horrible event like last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon: driven to get something, anything, out there, the cable news channels, the airwaves, and the Twitterverse became veritable fountains of misinformation. Apparently, the old journalistic principle that you didn’t go live with something unless you’d verified it with at least two sources is as dead as Walter Cronkite. Now what they report on is what’s been “reported,” whether or not said “report” is actually true or even from a credible source. Hey, they’re not lying. All they’re saying is that someone else said it. Such is the sorry state of “journalism” today. 

So in the aftermath of the carnage, unsubstantiated rumors and gossip became “reports”, which were breathlessly passed on but which quickly became discarded as new and more lurid rumors took center stage. The device was a pipe bomb. There were two other devices found that hadn’t exploded. No, three. Twelve people were dead, among them an eight year old girl who’d come to see her Daddy run the marathon. A Saudi national had been arrested running from the scene. And, of course, before the echoes of the blasts had died down and the wounded were still bleeding in the streets of Boston, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of the online nuthouse Infowars were proclaiming that the whole thing was a government conspiracy. (When an Infowars “reporter” asked if the bombing was a “false flag operation to take away our civil liberties,” Governor Deval Patrick’s three-word response was a lesson in how to handle stupid questions: “No. Next question.”)

The wave of BS reached a crescendo on Wednesday when CNN said there were “reports” that a suspect had been identified. Then there were “reports” that there was a suspect in custody. Then there were “reports” that there wasn’t. Finally, the Boston FBI office released a statement refuting the story: “Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack.” Once can almost hear the exasperation as the release goes on to say: “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.” 

Yeah, good luck with that. 

The part about “unintended consequences” brings to mind one of the most pernicious effects of misinformation: if you say one thing today, and say something different tomorrow, there are thousands of the above-mentioned conspiracy theorists out there who’ll insist that the correction was not an attempt to set the record straight, but is part of a cover-up. For example, after the Newtown massacre, one incorrect MSNBC report that killer Adam Lanza (originally misidentified as his brother Ryan) had left his Bushmaster semi-automatic mass murder weapon in his car is still being seized on to this day by callous gun nuts to “prove” that the government is lying about assault weapons to promote the “gun control agenda.” Of course, these are the same people who won’t believe anything else ever reported on MSNBC, but you can’t expect consistency from crazy people. 

Sure enough, as soon as it was revealed that the “Saudi national” who was supposedly taken into custody was being questioned as a witness, not a suspect, commenters at the right wing website “the Blaze” were proclaiming that the President was “protecting his Muslim brothers.” 

I know we can’t forbid news organizations from spreading misinformation (darn that pesky First Amendment!). But there ought to be some kind of required warning label on all the crap the news media spreads in the immediate aftermath of a horrible crisis. Something like a disclaimer in the ubiquitous “crawl” running across the bottom of the screen: “Warning: thanks to the near-total erosion of journalistic standards, the so-called ‘information’ you are receiving in this broadcast may be based on rumor, half-truth, prejudice, completely unfounded speculation, or the person on-screen just pulling allegations out of their rear end because they have nothing solid to report but don’t want to just stand there looking like a goober.” If we’re going to be so consistently misinformed by our media, we should at least be informed of that fact.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage.

Giving a Voice to The Voiceless...Republicans?

Latest Newspaper Column:

"Psst!" The voice came from a dark alley down a side street. If the voice hadn't sounded like someone I knew, I would have quickened my pace and walked on. But I stopped.
 
"What's going on, dude?" I asked the familiar figure in the shadows.

"Have you heard the latest?" he said, his voice glum.

"Can you be a little more specific?" I said.

"It's the General Assembly," he said.

"Oh, Lord," I sighed. "What have they done now?"

"Where do I start?" he said. "They've decided to monkey around with the state's divorce laws and require couples to wait two years instead of one to get a divorce. And they have to get hours of counseling in the meantime."

"Oh," I said, "I can't think of any way THAT could possibly go wrong. And don't tell me - let me guess. Whoever came up with this bill hasn't provided any way all this counseling's going to get paid for."

"Of course not," he said. "You and I both know it's going to be a disaster. Having the state keep couples together who don't want to be is just asking for more domestic violence. Not to mention the fact that it's more government intrusion in people's lives. We're supposed to be the party that's against that." He shook his head. "Every time we get in and have a chance to do some real good," he said, "we go and pull something like this."

"Hey, that's right," I said. "Aren't YOU a Republican?"

"Shhhh!" he said frantically. "They can't know!"

I was going to ask who, but I knew. "Don't worry," I said resignedly. "Your secret is safe with me."

OK, it didn't happen in a dark alley, but his dramatization is a reflection of actual conversations I've had in the past few weeks with at least three Republican friends (yes, I do have them) who are aghast at what our new GOP overlords are doing, but who, for one reason or another, don't feel like they can go against the current Republican Jihad.

It's not just the cockeyed proposal for the government to force divorcing couples to stay together when they've decided to part. It's nonsense like the attempt to suppress votes among college students by denying their parents the state tax deduction if the kids vote where they're going to school.

That's right: The people who supposedly are against any and all tax increases are perfectly willing to raise yours if your college-age children vote where they live the majority of the year. Note that it doesn't matter how much actual support you provide them; their status as dependents is entirely determined by where they vote. Yes, they can vote absentee, but why should they have to?

What problem is solved by this, other than the pesky problem for the Republicans that college students tend to vote Democratic, and if you make it more inconvenient for them, the Democrats may lose some votes in the next close election?

It seems to me that the Republicans spend a lot of time and energy, not on the economy or job creation, but on trying to make it more difficult for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups to vote. Makes you wonder just how confident they really are about their ideas, if they have to try and rig the election to win.

Or how about the bill introduced in the General Assembly to make any "public servant" who attempts to enforce a federal gun law guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor? Or the one attempting to exempt North Carolina from the First Amendment by establishing an official state religion?

Another frustrated Republican friend asked me, when we were discussing the above, "What the heck does this have to do with jobs or the economy? How is this going to make this state more of a draw for business?"

It's the classic GOP bait-and-switch: They say they're about growing the economy, easing regulation, creating jobs, etc. You know, the "doing real good" that my Republican friend mentioned. But as soon as they get in, it's all about the radical right-wing social and theocratic agenda.

And now, it's not just liberal democrats feeling as if N.C. voters have been hoodwinked. And yet, for one reason or another, the people I call the "sane Republicans" feel like they can't speak up. In fact, one of them was the one who suggested that I write a column on this subject - so long as I didn't use his name.
Well, giving a voice to the voiceless is part of my mission in life. I just never thought the "voiceless" would include members of the ruling party.

April Fool's Day Can't Keep Up

Latest newspaper column:

This past Monday, as you know, was April Fool's  Day. And, as always, jokers and pranksters everywhere tried to pull the wool over the eyes of their fellow citizens with straight-faced claims of outrageous events and plans.

In the age of the Internet, April Fools' jokes seem to have gotten bigger and more elaborate, certainly more widespread.

The message service Twitter, for example, announced that from now on, users would be subjected to a two-tiered system: You could pay $5 a month for the currently full level of functionality, or you could keep using Twitter for free - but you wouldn't have access to vowels, so yr twts wld lk lk ths.

Google claimed to be introducing "Google Nose," which would allow users to search for smells online. Lindsay Lohan announced that she was pregnant. Alas, this last joke fell rather flat, because (a) it's too plausible; and (b) no one really cares about Lindsay Lohan anymore.

As I've said before, however, one of the hardest things about spoofs, satire and cons in this modern world is keeping ahead of a reality that's becoming increasingly more bizarre. Some stories that you could swear were pranks turned out to be true.

So, just for fun, see which of the following stories from last week were true, and which ones were April Fools' jokes:

- NASA announced plans for a mission that would send a robotic spacecraft into deep space to capture an asteroid and tow it to the moon, where it could be more easily studied and, possibly, mined for raw material. The asteroid would be trapped inside a giant bag deployed from the spacecraft and towed back to lunar orbit.

- Airline Samoa Air announced that it was going to start pricing tickets by the weight of the passenger and their luggage. "The rates range from $1 a kilogram (or about $2.20 per pound) for the weight of the traveler and their baggage - on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram (or about $9.17 per pound) for travel from Samoa to the neighboring nation of American Samoa," according to a story in Time magazine.

- A Turkish Muslim group claimed victory after iconic Danish toymaker Lego announced that it was withdrawing one of its playsets depicting Jabba the Hutt's palace from the "Star Wars" movies, after complaints from the group.

The Turkish Cultural Association claimed that the palace itself closely resembled the Hagia Sofia Mosque in Istanbul. Further, they said, the figure of the galactic underworld kingpin Jabba was shown as a "terrorist who likes to smoke hookah and have his victims killed," and the playset was thus insulting to Muslims.

Lego originally insisted that it was only "following the film," but announced this week that it would discontinue the product as of 2014.

- A professor at the University of Rochester in New York who described himself as a "hard-core libertarian" caused a stir when he published an online essay proposing that it shouldn't be illegal to have sex with people who are unconscious, "in a way that causes no direct physical harm - no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission."

The professor went on to ask, "As long as I'm safely unconscious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn't the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits?"

- Two North Carolina lawmakers introduced a resolution in the General Assembly last week calling for North Carolina to declare itself exempt from the "no establishment of religion" clause in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
If passed, the resolution would state that "the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." Further, the resolution states, North Carolina would "not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the state of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the state from making laws respecting an establishment of religion."

Give up? All of the above stories are real.

Truth: It's not only stranger than fiction, it's also more foolish.

COVER STORIES

 Blogging today about the evolution of my latest cover over at the Thalia Press Authors Co-Op Blog.