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Not a TNBW item for discussion, nor a SOLN approved topic--I know, but the following shows so much about how to speak with a forked tongue while keeping a straight face:

CDC Director Robert Redfield made the following brilliant statements today about children returning to school *during* the pandemic asap and *before* any inoculation would be given to the little tikes--possibly worthy of a Nobel Prize:

1. “All schools should remain open. It is the safest place for children to be.”

2. He exclaimed that following the data shows “there has been no intra-school transmission and we must make sure not to make emotional decisions when the data strongly supports making sure schools remain open.” *** Here's the funny thing about statistics. We all know how often cause and effect applies through our lives, but in the world of statistics, one often reverses the flow from effect to cause for an agenda. It happens all the time in order to maximize benefits or goal achievement. As an example, my statistics show that handgun shootings are far more lethal than being struck by lightning. If you look at my statistics, you'll see an overwhelming number of those killed by gunfire as opposed to lightning strikes. Therefore, I can conclude for you that your chances of survival are greater by taking head on a lightning stroke carrying its typical average of 1 billion volts and anywhere from 10,000 to 200,000 amps of electricity than a bullet. Hmm, I wonder if you get vaporized will I need to count you in the statistics?

Because the vast majority of children are kept out of harm's way since March (homebound) to avoid direct contact with Covid-19, it shouldn't need a brain surgeon like Ben Carson to figure out why the statistics composing the number of children infected and/or died are so much lower than that of adults. By the way, there are more adults than children nationwide, and the adults are more much more likely to be in higher risk situations than children--or we can go with the bizarre idea that children are highly resistant to the virus (see effect to cause rationalization from the world of statistics).

Now, a couple of months ago Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner made this statement paraphrased: We need to promote contact tracing on a wide scale to safeguard the school children. By bringing the children back to school, it will provide *a perfect petri-dish for the virus*, and we'll have an abundant number of subjects for contact tracing. *** A bit more on who Beutner is - he was handed the position for unknown reasons and has no experience in education or the administration of such. His accomplishments include leading a large investment banking firm back in New York City for a number of years that made him a billionaire several times over. When he came over and became a California resident, he took the helm of the Los Angeles Times news media and was subsequently asked to leave by the board of directors for unknown reasons. A month ago, the same news media discovered that LAUSD has given all of its Covid-19 testing business to a single lab company. That company only came into existence three months ago and the owner of the lab is the founder of internet giant Earthlink, as well as a good friend of Beutner. So, would Beutner be attempting to push kids back into an environment where they can be infected via the "perfect petri-dish" in order to flush a lot of testing business to his fellow billionaire and good buddy? Perish the thought! That would mean he is trading children lives for cash for his friend, and everyone knows the more wealth you accumulate, the higher your ethical pyramid will grow.

In conclusion, if the nation follows the advice of both of these brilliant men (Redfield + Beutner), we can significantly expand our virus data a.k.a contact tracing on children (including kindergartners) and provide far more safety against the virus by placing them back in school versus being homebound for the small price of thousands of children lives, not counting those that survive and are crippled for life (permanent respiratory damage, brain damage equivalent to the brain aging 10 years, amputation from blood clotting, etc.) Of course, those that escape the more severe effects will only be carriers to take it back to their family members.

It is clear how well thought out such concepts are by both of these intellectual giants. And yes, they were able to say all this while keeping a straight face on camera.

Somewhere in the earlier posts, I once posted a copy from an editor blog that outlines the "acceptable" limits by word count for different genres. For fantasy, it's generally accepted that the limit goes higher because of the necessary details and world building that other genres don't have to deal with, so around 185K words is the limit.

For myself, I always knew that my novel wasn't going to fit in this box as it's more of an epic story than a condensed one. Brandon Sanderson is a ray of sunshine for this topic - he and a few others have managed to break this rigidity with publishers and hopefully provide more flexibility on their part. Sanderson was working as a desk clerk when he finally was contacted by TOR (one of the "big 5" publishing giants). They had his 400K word manuscript for several months before an editor finally read it and fell in love with it. Sanderson has gone on to win several prestigious novel awards (including the prized Hugo Award for best novella) and even got another nearly 400k novel published by TOR (The Way of Kings).

It's hard to say what's in the mind of some publishers versus others, just like it is for people. I know that if you write a very good and compelling story, most readers, including a good number of editors, won't close the book because it reached a certain word count. I can't imagine how the face of a publishing CEO would look if he found out his editors tossed out the first novel of Game of Thrones because it had a nearly 300K word count. In fact, there's supposed to be a number of publishers that felt like jumping off the building after knowingly rejecting Harry Potter, book 1, though she wrote within the acceptable limits (I think it's around 80K word count).

Okay. I thought you were considering pulling the book from group reviews because of what I said. From the mechanics viewpoint, your chapters are easy to review: good sentence structures, mostly active-voiced lines, no misses on spelling, good grammar, and short chapters.

I have noticed you are using more dialogue interplay (it seems to me than before) to usher in a better dramatic effect, and I completely agree with that approach. See which one shows an angry character but is more impactful (narrative vs dialogue) -- Jack was angry at Cheryl and when she walked into the room, he chastised her without pause. vs Jack turned around at the sound of someone walking into the room. "There you are--you damn bitch! Do you know how much you screwed me over, Cheryl?"

I used an angry Jack example because it's easier to illustrate my point, but I do see your current writing uses the latter over the former, so that's all good. But as Stephen King says, you can use dialogue to bond the reader to the characters, but it's narrative that you need to move the story forward. Thus, chapter 7 of TREA was giving me a rough time because of not only the feeling of having Dan versus a concept instead of an organization or person, but also it kicks off with about 7 paragraphs of narrative. If you had a mix of dialogue and narration, then I think it would go over better there. Say someone bursts into his apartment while Dan is listening to reports on TV and begins to dialogue with him. It would be up to you if the uninvited friend actually made things worse for Dan from what they said about Global Warming, or mirrored his thoughts in conversing with him.

I just don't feel comfortable in pointing at something that *could* cause a Jenga puzzle collapse if the author agreed with it and moved to make such changes. I don't see how to restructure the antagonist aspect without causing a whole rewrite that pervades through all 22 chapters. On the other hand, I didn't want to just toss out some cookie cutter prosaic statement like: "Good chapter and great story, Alkemi. Stay the course and looking forward to the final chapter!" which I don't think would be of much help other than waving palm palms.

I should just point at 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for our discussion. Pretend that Jules Verne wanted to bring attention to whaling and the misuse of ocean resources. If he writes about a protagonist that crusades against such things (an ancient representative of Greenpeace), then I think the story has an uphill battle to gain reader interest. Man vs concept. Instead, he uses Captain Nemo and his vaunted submarine as the antagonist.

Look at this interplay between Ned (a whale harpooner by trade) and Captain Nemo:
Captain Nemo watched the troop of cetacea playing on the waters about a mile from the Nautilus. "They are southern whales," said he; "there goes the fortune of a whole fleet of whalers."
"Well, sir," asked the Canadian, "can I not chase them, if only to remind me of my old trade of harpooner?"
"And to what purpose?" replied Captain Nemo; "only to destroy! We have nothing to do with the whale-oil on board."
"But, sir," continued the Canadian, "in the Red Sea you allowed us to follow the dugong."
"Then it was to procure fresh meat for my crew. Here it would be killing for killing's sake. I know that is a privilege reserved for man, but I do not approve of such murderous pastime. In destroying the southern whale (like the Greenland whale, an inoffensive creature), your traders do a culpable action, Master Land. They have already depopulated the whole of Baffin's Bay, and are annihilating a class of useful animals. Leave the unfortunate cetacea alone. They have plenty of natural enemies—cachalots, swordfish, and sawfish—without you troubling them."

Nemo is the story's villain, but like Ricardo Montalban said, Nemo doesn't see himself as a villain. He's the only one who can protect the ocean from a barbarous and pillaging species known as mankind. Nemo's acts are villainous, though he doesn't see himself as such.

This is also a villain that can directly interact with the protagonist, chastise him for his hunting of whales, and also gives the protagonist an achievable goal - stop Nemo and he stops the villain (or is Nemo the martyr here? Depends on your ideals). Nemo also has a definable goal - sink enough ships and kill enough sailors, humans will pull back their voracious hands from the whales and such.

Some thoughts of mine on your current novel - The Road to Environmental Armageddon (TREA).

I normally start a review by copy/pasting the chapter onto a word doc so that I can read it easier (can enlarge text, highlight, etc.) and run my Grammarly as a backup set of eyes to my own for anything I might miss (grammar, spelling, etc.) This time, after doing all that, I was still was left staring at my next TREA chapter review (ch.7) on and off for a few days now without being able to get going on it. This hasn't happened to me before, but it hit me on this one what I think I've been sensing since "Souring Seas".

The chapter that's currently befuddling me begins with 7 paragraphs of narration that portrays various governments and their reactions to Global Warming and therein lies what I now believe is the albatross that's tied itself to you all this time, Alkemi. Forgive the caps but I feel it's imperative to emphasize my epiphany over this point: YOUR VILLAIN IS A CONCEPT VS AN EMOTIONAL FLESH AND BLOOD ENTITY. When a villain is unemotional, external, and lacks the ability to emotionally interact with the protagonists, the writing course is going to be like trying to sail between Scylla & Charybdis.

One of the best explanations of what I'm trying to say can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tP5tZ_ekXs from the late Ricardo Montalban (may he rest in peace). About halfway through my novel, I ran across what he had to say on villains and ever since I've tried to keep it in mind for writing because it's just that good.

Star Trek, quite a long-lived iconic success as science fiction and does many things right (disclaimer: I'm not a "trekkie" and have never been to any conventions). The series is also famous for teaching that splitting infinitives is not a death knell in writing as the beginning caption starts with -- "To boldly go". Okay, back to RM. He's a genius when he stated on getting the best kind of villain in the story goes like this - "A villain doesn't see himself as a villain. He actually thinks he's doing the right thing, but does villainous acts." This was the guiding principle of how RM played his iconic villain role "Khan". To Khan, Admiral Kirk is the villain for marooning them on an abandoned world that led to the death of his beloved wife - Kirk needs to pay for doing such a horrible thing (Khan's PoV). Of course, at some point through his journey for justice / vengeance, Kirk becomes Khan's "white whale", like in Moby Dick, and the obsession to destroy the "villain" makes him more unstable as the movie goes on.

Consequently, the audience just gobbled this up. A strong protagonist, Kirk, against a strong antagonist, Khan, where both are convinced the other is the villain and this can only result in a nail biting struggle between them. But do you think you can draw out reader emotions like that when the "villain" is a non-corporeal, concept - Global Warming? You wouldn't want to at this point try to declare that's not a villain in your novels because it just leads you into the trap of having to admit you really don't have a villain at all. A story with no villain and/or hero is dead on arrival and we all know that - no one on here is a newbie to writing.

That YouTube video (just under 4 minutes long, I think) also has Ricardo Montalban recounting the dilemma the producers faced in the beginning. He said they went back through the archive of films and examined one villain after another from different episodes, then settled on a "machine AI", a computerized star ship that was hellbent on killing Kirk (I think I remember what episode they are referring to on this). But the producers realized in the end the difficulty bar was way too high to use it as a villain. How do you get an unemotional antagonist to pull out raw emotions of your audience? How can a thing that doesn't hate, love, like, dislike, become vengeful, become forgiving, etc. interact in terms of emotions with the others in the story? Hence, they correctly veered course to Khan and called up RM.

This is why I believe the villain is a significant problem for your novels on Global Warming / Climate Change. I would suggest building a villain with the following in mind that incorporates some or all of what RM said.

Global Warming Villain:
1. Use a flesh and blood person (probably someone with great authority) or maybe more than one (a group). This immediately allows you to have the villain(s) interact with your characters using emotions and emotional outcomes.
2. Your villain(s) thinks that by helping promote Global Warming they are doing the right thing. Examples of their thoughts: Maybe they feel by causing a third or up to a half of the world's population to die off, this will be something that qualifies them for sainthood. They are saving the planet from being overrun by humans - not enough food and too many mouths to feed. Maybe they want to implement a version of herd immunity - usher in Global Warming and the survivors will be the naturally selected humans to go on. This in turn will allow a more hardy species of humans to continue populating the Earth. There's plenty more examples, but I think the point is made.

You already have 22 chapters finished for TREA, so I think these are things to consider for your next novel. I certainly would not suggest making such a major change that is going to effectively cause a rewrite of 22 chapters.

The last item I want cover in the hopes it will be of some help to you is drama vs reality. Most, if not all, of the best sellers we would read can't possibly have that many things go wrong in the time frame of the story here in our world of reality. And the readers say to this - So? Who cares? I've been living in reality all my life, so why do I want to come home after school or work and read about reality? But there's a fine line between creating the dramatic and going overboard, I think of the horrible movie that I'm glad a family member turned the channel away from before it was too late - Sharknado. Tornadoes sucking up sharks and dropping them inland on hapless victims is certainly dramatic, but it clearly went overboard. A concept of a killer Bigfoot that terrorizes hikers would be pooh-pooed by most inhabitants of reality rules, but it has a lot more reality than you think behind it. Thousands of years of legends, paintings, and witnessing of these cryptozoological creatures by American Indians, Tibetians, and ancient peoples in other parts of Asia lead to a hefty amount of historical evidence.

Thus, we should all be willing to consider using for our stories things that are *unlikely" over *can't happen*.

So I put all this up here because your line writing structure never needed much help, and even less now that software editors are available to us all. It's pulling out reader emotions that you need to work on. As an example, I like to read for learning purposes mostly, Chinese fantasy novels. Why? Well, aside from terrible information dumps, repetition after repetition, and constantly interrupting action with expository, these Chinese authors do something better than western writers do -- they can emotionally invest readers like nobody's business. A young and loving married couple are on the outskirts of the big city when they stop to help a nearly blind old farmer harvest some of her crop that has matured. At this point, you (the reader) like this married couple and feel they are quite morally upright and it's no wonder they are in love with each other since they resemble one another in values. Soon after, they enter the big city for the first time because they need to buy medicine for some sick villagers back in their village. They walk a short distance down the main road and are confronted by a half dozen burly armed men with a young man in colorful robes directing them. The young nobleman tosses a pouch filled with coins at the husband. He catches the pouch and asks, "Why did you toss this to me?" / "I've taken a liking to your wife, and the money is so you don't say I cheated you," the nobleman says and motions to his bodyguards to seize the woman. "Don't worry. Once I tire of riding her, I'll let her go or sell her into slavery to get some of that money back."/ The husband is furious and says, "I don't know a lot about the city, but I know if I report you, it won't end well for you!" / The nobleman sneers. "Yes, go report me and don't forget to tell them I'm the only son of the governor of this city." *** This is the kind of thing these writers are good at doing. They can make you, as the reader, feel sorry for the couple and despise the young nobleman for his unreasonable and ruthless conduct. It's not realistic, but it could happen and more importantly, it tugs at your emotions as the reader.

To me, this is why your emotional tugging on the reader needs to be done primarily through dialogue while your narration is mostly used when the scene needs to be set for the reader. Flesh and blood villains and heroes are a must for this. Global Warming can be the weapon they use, but the villain can't be seen to be the GW itself.

Jumped right on the land mine with both feet first. Well, you and I discussed this in messages a while ago, so I'm guessing your question is more aimed at inquiring of any remaining members. Still, I'll take the opportunity to provide some of the background that most here are unaware of.

Originally, myself and Matthew Abelack had discussed how difficult it was to get reviews, especially from the same reviewers who could stick with the story as it progresses. Hence, the idea of forming a review group came out of this.

It was certainly going to just remain at the "grumbling" level until I got a message from a fellow pen named "Cobber" who was convinced a review group was going to be formed and wanted to join. With three TNBW members interested in being part of a review group, it meant we had to seriously consider forming one and leave the grumbling stage behind.

The three of us, and everyone else who subsequently joined, were all experienced in how things go in life, so we all knew that leading the group was going to be a hot potato. The group lead has to try to keep everything and everyone on track (hopefully a track that leads in a direction everyone wants to go), yet doesn't have any authority to push any member(s) back on track if it appears necessary. After all, members are members on a voluntary basis; no one is an employee, so as a group lead just be glad they were willing to join, right?

And in the end, one of my biggest disappointments turned out to be the very same person who pushed the hardest for the formation of the review group--Cobber. After getting some member messages about him, you have no idea how I felt when I checked his reviews from his profile and discovered he had shifted almost entirely to reviewing those outside the review group AFTER his novel was finished with our inside help. It reminds me of the Chinese 36 stratagems, in particular, number 12-- "Take the Opportunity to Pilfer a Goat."

On a different note, these are some of the kinds of complaints and things mentioned to me in messages over the course, so you can get an idea of how rocky it could get at times keeping the peace: 1. Nom De Plume is late again on their reviews. Can you say something to them? 2. Nom De Plume hasn't been active in the group for a long while now. Maybe you should consider dropping them and recruiting a replacement? 3. I don't like Nom De Plume's genre, and I have to push myself each time just to review a chapter; it's not a genre I would read on my own. 4. An inch to a mile! I give a very thorough review, sometimes taking a few hours of my time, and in return I get a smattering of simple edits from Nom De Plume! I don't believe I'm so good a writer that nothing more can be evaluated for improvement with less than a dozen edits. Nom De Plume is obviously just doing a tiny bit more than an editing software and expecting a high quality review in return (this was a common complaint, btw.) 5. It's hard to stay in a rhythm for reviews because some write new chapters too fast while others write them too slow.

There were also good ones lest anyone think it was all just doom and gloom: 1. The reason I stay in the review group is because there some outstanding reviewers. I really don't think I could pay for an editor that could do a better job. 2. I like how our members are seasoned and used to each other's styles. There's no way anyone else on this site can jump in and know all that is going on with my novel from the beginning like our group members do. 3. The writing level of our members is advanced. You can tell when you read their prose that no one's struggling to learn how to write for the first time. After all is said and done, I do think it was worth forming the group. Yes, everyone got different amounts of sugar out of this stalk of cane but that's to be expected.

<Here, I'm going to vent some> Ultimately, to me, the whole problem with needing review groups and dealing with the inherent problems that come with such things is because SOLN's current review system simply sucks. I have posted a quickee to him before that his point system favors beginning chapters but soon becomes useless once a writer's chapters advance to the middle or end stage of their book. Why should John Doe review 30-50 of your chapters when he can get the same points from reviewing anyone? Because you will return the favor? But what if, and that's extremely likely, you both don't review each other to the same degree of effort and satisfaction? This is why I proposed to SOLN to *reverse* his current methodology and have his system assign a greater weight of points at different stages for a writer doing reviews. For example, I review your first 10 chapters and they are weighted with the standard points they are set with currently. From chapters 11-20, the system identifies me as a continuing reviewer of your work and grants me bonus points for each chapter in this phase I review. Then, the bonus points are increased in the next phase and so on until I reach the end of your book. His answer? Let's do a short story contest to resuscitate the flagging interest overall. No, SOLN. Members join TNBW to get reviews, not to read stories. Did you forget your website's statement about quality reviews available at just a membership price? It doesn't say join and you can read other writer's stories, does it? His contests should actually be over who can turn in the best review, not who can write the best short story. The man has actually forgotten which road to walk.

Hmm, a good title to this would be: MY GOVERNOR IS WORSE THAN YOURS.

So, our California state governor announced he plans to put the children back into school by "the end of July". His reason? An amazing vaccine composed of nannite technology that can easily handle the now over 30 different mutation strains of SARS2 (Corona virus a.k.a. Covid-19)? A sure fire antiviral that can target any cell membrane structure of the virus unlike TamiFlu, which only targets the common flu cellular structure and is basically impotent against SARS2? No, none of these reasons. To paraphrase his reason: "The loss of education has reached an intolerable level and we must get the children back into school." Hohoho! What an amazing argument! Let's say the virus presence remains anywhere from 1 to 5 years in the state, so the loss of say 5 years of education is more intolerable to him than the loss of say 50-80 years of life expectancy for elementary school kids to the parents? Yes, to be a governor it seems you don't need to be someone that makes Mensa Society members feel threatened over your I.Q. Anyways, I can't see how he can convince families, so he's going to have to implement something by force or overbearing pressure (another way of saying force) to make the children go back into the classrooms.

Not that it matters, but my opinion of many scientists speaking about SARS2 is definitely sinking to an all time low. Here's an email I sent to a scientist arguing the best protection was a full face shield with built in 3M filters on the front sides, you know, the kind that is locked for sale to only medical and gov't agencies ---

"I've got a similar mask (MSA model with N100 filters) from a couple of years ago, but I don't wear it in favor of a face shield + N95 mask. Why? Because the filters are in front and can be coughed or sneezed on.

"Filters? It's commonly known that the Corona virus, flu virus, cold virus, etc. are all smaller in size than the 2.5 microns or larger that these filters are designed to stop. It's even more difficult to stop if the person is in an enclosed space with forced ventilation (supermarket, classroom, etc.) since the virus when coughed out or sneezed can use the air current to travel much farther distances than in still air and impact with a propelling force behind them.

"This is why as strange as it seems, a $10 PET plastic face shield and N95 mask would offer superior protection than my MSA mask or yours. If you disagree, I'd be interested in what supportive arguments you have."

Other scientists / snollygosters (snollygoster - a very old term not in use today: a person of high intelligence that is devoid of morals and goodness) are arguing for the "herding effect" a polite term for natural selection. Throw enough people together to get some immunes, and then you only need to throw out the dead bodies, no problemo. Will these scientists volunteer to lead by example? Not a chance.

Yes, it should be the kind of strong pause that everyone can agree they would need to make when reading a sentence.

If we say there is a strong pause or strong break, then does that mean the opposite exists? There is a term for weak break or weak interruption, and that's where a lot more confusion will occur. For example, parenthetical phrases are deemed a weak break and U.K. writers, readers, and informative sources will run such a break without the comma. Here's an example from the University of Sussex in England recommending to do just that (I don't agree because I do hear a solid break after "war") ---

"In many cases a weak interruption does not absolutely require bracketing commas. Thus either of the following is fine:

    Shortly before the war, he was living in Paris.
    Shortly before the war he was living in Paris."

I really do think that the Italian who implemented the modern comma would be aghast at the current rules for their usage. Everyone knows they are primarily for setting off a pause in the sentence, but many of the current rules have gone beyond that.

Okay, maybe I'm the only one that finds all the rules and arguments revolving around the use of commas fascinating. I often take a look at the English Stack Exchange, where they usually have some doozies going on.

Here is one fellow's dilemma, and I thought it was worth posting about. He's agonizing over the usage of past tense participles as restrictive (no comma) or non-restrictive (comma used) and how to figure out which is what.

Before you snicker that you're sparkling new software editor (Grammarly, Whitesmoke, Hemmingway, etc.) will handle it, allow me to shatter your illusions and inform you that there are many situations where those editors can't handle the different comma rules, and so it will just let it all go - meaning it will green light you when using a comma or no comma for the same exact sentence either way. What? Dorothy said that the wizard behind the curtain sometimes goes blind. Oh, no!

So this was one of the examples driving him nuts - except I changed the order of his nouns to make it more fun.
A. The terrorists were captured on the CCTV, threatening people on the streets.
B. The terrorists were captured on the CCTV threatening people on the streets.

Most everyone was trying to make the determination on what sounded better as the guide. However, there are actually comma rules that can handle this for you without you needing to rely on your "ear", which may not quite hear it the same way as the next reader and so on.

His problem here was he tried to view this from a tail wags the dog viewpoint. It's not the verb participle (threatening) that makes the determination. It's the fact that there are two nouns in the line, and a lesser known rule goes in to effect because of this.

*Rule* When you have more than one noun that the verb can link to, a comma is used WHENEVER the linked subject is not directly in front of the participle. In this case, the linked noun is not directly before the participle, and so you would use a comma. By leaving out the comma, you are telling the reader that your verb is intended to modify the noun directly in front of it.

Do you think you'll get the same answer if you used the restrictive, non-restrictive rule? The software editors know better than to even try, so it will let both versions through the gate.

The linked subject or noun location rule would result in example A as correct. However, the restrictive, non-restrictive rule would result in example B as the correct version (restrictive information). See what happens if you only learn the restrictive, non-restrictive rule for participles? In the example line, you can only opt for one version or the other - example A is correct and the one you would use, even though both rules are resulting in different conclusions.

About five paragraphs from the beginning, I used "in to" but why not "into"? Is there a rule governing which one to use? Yes, I picked something that the almighty software editor can't handle either, and it simply tries to have you use "into" for all situations.

I can only hope it doesn't keep happening. If she didn't message me about it, I wouldn't have known.

On a different topic - there's a new regular member *Nap* that I'm pretty sure is a troll according to his review comments. I'd suggest everyone blocking him now rather than later should he post his inane drivel on your works.

Raymond Arroyo has the most unfair advantage I've ever seen any novelist have. Yes, life was never fair and likely never will be, but his advantage is just so far over the top I had to vent some here (huff!).

Who is RA? He's a commentator on nationally syndicated Fox News Network and pops up a lot as either the main commentator or guest speaker on everything from politics to religion issues. But what irks me is this chubby Pee-Wee Herman look-alike (I know, don't judge a book by its cover) always plugs his book series at the end of the shows or the commentator plugs it for him.

Yes, that's right. He gets his book series *repeatedly* advertised to millions of viewers across the nation almost day and night. It's like knowing you have to sail your viking ship into battle and the other side is waiting with their new Ford class aircraft carrier.

Sure, maybe his book 3 released this year in the Will Wilder series ranked 1,396 overall on Amazon and #78 for children fantasy books has nothing much to do with such a massive advertising advantage ... then again.

Okay, those were my sour grapes for the guy showing up at a foot race we all have to enter - riding his own motorcycle.

How did he swing such a deal? I can only guess he at one time saved the life of one of the network's higher ups, or he found the remains of Aladdin's lamp - Jinn included.

I haven't seen Al Sharpton plug his book, but I think he has his own show on MSNBC, so I can't imagine he wouldn't. It sure looks like a very small exclusive club of those armed with TV networks for marketing.