Update

My apologies for not posting lately. This is the longest stretch in a while, and for those of you checking back here, I appreciate your patience. I have in mind at least three articles for this site, along with a couple of movie reviews, but for the moment I am 'dug in' to the work on the novel. I imagine other fantasy novelists could tell you the same story, as I've just reached the 32,000 word mark for the GUIDE to my novel's world. Yup. 100 pages. And that's just the guide. I hope to be finished the guide by next Friday, at which point I can start the re-write of the 600 pages I've already written. Much of that will have to be changed, but I will be able to follow the same storyline, at least. Having said that, I've picked up a few tidbits from the news lately...

Election Notes

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know where I stand on this issue, but for those of you who don't, let me just say that the Tuseday midterms in the US were pretty disappointing. At this point, I'm not sure what people want from Obama. He ran his campaign on health care. He promised a stimulus package, one that all economists agreed was necessary. And now he's spending too much?

Most people forget that as late as 2000, both presidential candidates talked about getting rid of the debt. Gore even campaigned on it. (Bush mentioned it, but wafled on it and then dropped it. Little did people know how he was about to become the biggest spender in presidential history.) Imagine now, only ten years later, and the US debt is so high that people are scared the economy will collapse. And yet, it was a Republican presidency that pushed the deficit and debt skywards. A big part of that was the war on Iraq, which only happened as a result of lies from the same administration doing the spending. The past two years, the Senate has suffered filibusters (from the Republicans) more than any time in its history. And yet somehow people think that they deserve to be back in power?

It seems as if the talk shows are driving the narrative here. I'd encourage people to pick up some of the books that have come out recently, like Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward, and take a closer look at things.

None of this matters however, if the Democrats do not learn how to communicate what they have done and why it is good for the country. They have too many smart people in their party not to figure it out, but until they do, the Republicans deserve to be there, because governing is as much about communicating as it is making decisions.

Recommended Reading

This is mentioned in my Reading section, but in case you missed it, I highly recommend both Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings. Tremendous reads, both of them.

Again, I hope to have a new article up by the end of the week, everyone. Thanks again for your patience.

-Steve