Current Status: My Writing Efforts

Just as a quick note, since I can no longer submit blog articles to the FWA Royal Palm Literary Awards, I submitted two unpublished short stories - one involving vampire bikers, and a sci-fi flash fiction - for consideration instead.

In the meantime, my trip to last weekend's Sunshine State Book Festival yielded zero sales for Funny Locations or any of the Strangely Funny anthologies I had on display. The guy on my right sold seven of his books, the guy on my left sold four. 

/deep heartbroken sigh 

I gotta work on my marketing skills ('cause I don't have any).

Will blog later tonight.

Regarding RPLA for Blogging

Just as a personal note, just got an email from the Florida Writers' Association that they are making changes for the 2025 Royal Palm Literary Awards, and one that impacts me is they are dropping the "Blog or Article" category from the Nonfiction awards.

It can boil down to how few submissions there seem to be for that category: Blogging is an obscure form of writing in this day, and fewer article writers for things like newspapers and magazines.

You may have noticed this year that the Royal Palms had no winners for that category. I had submitted four for 2024 and none of them made it past Semi-Finalist: Previous years I at least had one make it that far when I submitted that many (the one other year I didn't make Semi was when I submitted only two blog articles). 

This is for me rather heart-breaking. As a blogger, I'd like to think that this form of writing still has merit. There is a skill to creating nonfiction works, be it memoir or reporting or essay or opinion/persuasive. 

I think FWA will have Nonfiction awards going forward, but it's going to be a question if any of them can accept the type of blog writing - essay/opinion - I've been doing. I will see about submitting my other works - my short fiction - in due course.

It's kind of sad that I may be the last winner for Blog/Article writing for the Royal Palms.

Alas.

Personal Note: Appearing at the Sunshine State Book Festival in 2025

Just to let the 10 regular readers of this blog know, I plan on being at the upcoming Sunshine State Book Festival in Gainesville, FL the weekend of January 31st - February 1st this 2025.

 I'm promoting my humor story anthology Funny Locations, and using the opportunity to go visit my college stomping grounds again (GO GATORS) while I'm there.

The event itself is a bit far from the UF campus, but it should be easy to get to:

Best Western Gateway Grand
4200 NW 97th Blvd. Gainesville, Florida

(just off of I-75 in the northwest corner of the Gainesville area)

In the meantime, as the holidays approach, just a quick request to my peeps to hey BUY MY BOOKS please and thank you, they should make fine Saturnalia gifts...

Down And Out Under the Palms

Welp. I got word back from the judges at the FWA Royal Palm Literary panels.

All four submissions I put in for Non-Fiction: Blogging/Article did NOT make the Semifinalist cut this year.

After the high of winning a Gold for last year, striking out this year just hurts.

I wasn't in a good mental place since last week. This isn't helping.

...if y'all can get 500,000 people to buy my ebooks, that would be great.

/sigh

Final Touches on the Greatest Hits Book

A print copy of this blog's greatest hits is in the final stages.

I hired an editor through Reedsy to format the book for IngramSpark submission - I just couldn't figure out getting the gutters aligned! - both paperback and eBook, and I already had the cover done through Fiverr.

Should see the book on the market mid-May, just as I'll be heading to the FLA annual conference.

We'll see how it goes.

Input for the 2023 Royal Palm Awards, Please and Thanks

Hello, nine followers of this blog. You know what time it is?

It's time to figure out which articles to submit to the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards for their category of Nonfiction - Published Article or Blog.

Given the submission limitations, I can only send in five written items for judging. Since I'm planning on submitting my self-published story collection in one of the other categories, that narrows down the blog article choices to four.

I've personally whittled the choices down to these fifteen articles listed here:

Why It Matters - my argument in favor of putting trump on trial for all his sins

The Threat of Another War Of The (MAGA) Posers

The Mouse Knows How to Play (w/ Updates) - this one will require a lot of cleanup, but it's both whimsical and serious and I hope it has a chance

What Was Bought, What Was Sold

Losing It All In the Dirt Digging 

The Sins of Conservatism - one of the rants I'm incorporating into my -Isms book, but as a standalone essay it might convince

A Simple Question (w/ Update) - arguably my most direct critique of the GOP's failures at ethics and leadership

The Racism That SCOTUS Just Allowed

The Whitewash of History, on DeSantis' Orders - I'm very tempted to keep this one, very blunt about racism and very argumentative about the disastrous effects DeSantis' anti-Woke agenda is working out 

What If: How 2024 Could Play Out - on a par with my winning essay about NOT invading Iran

Punching Themselves Just a Little Bit More - THIS is the one I submitted to Batocchio for the Jon Swift Memorial, so this might be a keeper

Roma Invicta - My silliest ode to ROME ROME ANCIENT ROME FIVE TIMES A DAY IT POPS INTO MY DOME, WHICH REMINDS ME, THEY INVENTED THE DOME, IT'S ONE OF THE REASONS THAT I THINK ABOUT ROME ...ah sorry, earworm...

The Bare Minimum of Congressional Standards

Every Culture War Warrior a Hypocrite - it's a regional (Florida politics) essay with relevance

Never the Honest Answer from Republicans - similar to The Whitewash of History, but with a broader approach about the GOP's inability to admit how wrong slavery and racism are.

I know people don't like to use the Comments section below, but please let me know your suggestions. If you're on Twitter (fuck X) or Bluesky please send me direct messages that way, I am @PaulWartenberg at both sites. If any of my fellow bloggers in the circle of Crooks & Liars can share my request for input, please get the word out.

I'm looking to get my submissions in the first week of February, if you can let me know what you think before then, thank you.

Update: I've bitten the bullet and I am submitting The Sins of Conservatism, The Whitewash of History, What If: 2024..., and Punching Themselves... as my blog entries for RPLA. I'll be submitting them the first day of February. Here's hoping I get fair-minded judges. ;-)

Update 7/28/24: Just got the email from the Royal Palm coordinator.

NONE of the submissions reached Semifinalist stage.

This is not helping my mood at the moment.

After getting the Gold for last year's submissions, to draw a complete Zero this year... Frustrating. I'd cry if I could (I am finding it hard to even do that in my current mindset).

Quick Apology: December 2023 Edition

I did quiet down on my blogging this November in order to focus on my NaNo writing - which I got to 50,000 words but it's a mess - but I was also working on getting a new collection of short stories published so I am still a bit distracted by that even though most of the work is done.

Cover by M.A. Rehman at Fiverr

Details to follow once the paperback is officially on market.

Update: As of this afternoon, the paperback and ebook are available on Amazon.

It's a collection of stories since my college (1990s) days in Gainesville, and from my time in South Florida, and my time in the Tampa Bay area as I moved from workplace to workplace. I've written in various genres - fantasy, science fiction, horror, coming of age, thriller, mystery - but one of the running elements has been - hopefully - a sense of humor throughout. Growing up to Douglas Adams, Catch-22, and Doonesbury comic strips didn't help. 

In putting this book together, I decided to focus on the more humor-oriented stories and following a theme - for the most part - around locations. Given my Florida background, obviously a lot of these stories are based in the Sunshine State, but I've added stories based in Las Vegas, New York City, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Even a couple of places I've been to personally. Heh.

Wish me luck. I hope I find a readership.

I'll get back to blogging soon.

A Book On Isms

 I warned you this was coming: My National Novel Writing Month project this year is going to be a non-fiction work examining American -Isms.

I've already done the introductory chapter, and starting into the first -ism I want to examine: Liberalism (you may remember when I bashed Conservatism on this blog awhile ago that I argued Liberalism was the primary ideology of our nation, and that Conservatism a reaction against that).

So I will not be blogging extensively this month. I need to focus on this project (and get one DONE for once!). I do have two other book projects on hand to finish up as well: I need cover artists, dammit!

If I do blog here this November, it will have to be in response to a major breaking news item like oh donald trump pleading GUILTY on one of his 91 criminal indictments.

Good luck on your writing projects, y'all. NOW GET TO TYPING!!!

Working On a Greatest Hits Album

Trying to go back through more than 13 years of political blogging to filter down enough articles to publish as a book is tough going.

I tried looking at pulling together as much of the stuff I'd blogged - hell, still blogging - about the nightmarish trump years, but I ended up with over 700 pages of the first draft, and an aggressive weeding still left me around 450 pages. If I'm trying to find an audience, overwhelming them with something the bulk and weight of a British encyclopedia is not the way to go. Even academic libraries will avoid ordering a copy.

So I decided to go through and do a Greatest Hits collection of the best blog articles I've done since 2006, except THAT was getting to 400 pages and I hadn't even gotten into 2019 at that point (my growing habit of writing long essays to impress the judges starts getting worse that year). Part of the problem was that I kept including extra blog articles to provide context to ongoing political issues or scandals I had been covering. /sigh

So, third stage of the project: I'm just going to limit myself. Just going to say "Thirty best articles, no matter what." If I need to provide context, I can add Author's introductory abstracts where needed. Just focus and get the good stuff to the readers.

Sorry for the distractions otherwise. If anything major happens on the trumpian front - say, more indictments - I will jump on that shit and blog some more stuff to add to the sequel book I've got planned BWHAHAHAHA.

In the meantime, any suggestions for a decent book title?

Update: Okay, I found my 30 articles. Page count at a respectable 159 right now. Anything I add for context shouldn't put me over 200 pages, so this is good. Still need a decent book title.

Taking a Break from Blogging July 2023 Version

I need to take a brief hiatus - again - from blogging to focus on writing a bigger project this month.

I need the well wishes, please and thanks. 

Here is a video of Mal hitting me with his tail.

Busy Week Ahead

Just saying, I've got a number of real-life projects I need to focus on for this first week of May. I hope the trump indictments for anything and everything can hold off until (checks calendar) May 11th. Thank you.

I may post a quick thing on May the Fourth.

See you then.

Taking a Break February 2023 Edition

I'm going to avoid blogging for this month of February so I can focus on a novel project I really REALLY want to get done: A book on American political ideologies (aka the -ISMs). I'm focused on this because  my nephews and niece are now in their 20s, and I'm a little worried their political belief structures are going to get overwhelmed in this age of misinformation.

That means I'm re-reading what I know about Liberalism and Conservatism, and gearing up to tear apart Libertarianism - I'll probably just quote verbatim from that book about bears - as well as a quick explanation why Socialism never worked out here in the states the way it did in Europe.

I'm going to have to figure out how to fit Moderate - which has a function in politics but not its own party - into a chapter. Can Moderatism (see, I get a redline spelling warning, that's not a real word dammit) fit into the -Ism model? Maybe conflate with Pragmatism?

I've already read through a number of books, but got about five more to crunch into the coming weeks. Busy already.

Stay safe out there, blog readers.

(Having promised this, watch as prosecutors in Georgia, New York, and DC file criminal charges on trump this month. ...sigh)

Update: Okay, yeah, the whole Chinese Spy Balloon Saga got waaaaaay too silly but what the hell, they'll be partying in Surfside Beach, SC this weekend celebrating the shootdown!

Well Ain't This A Kick? My Subtle Decades-Long Influence On the Political Discourse

So here I am, reading up on books on the various political ideologies - the Isms as I call 'em - so I can write a book on American Isms to pass along to my nephews and niece to ensure they don't get suckered in by the worst of dogma out there (slightly worried I may be too late as they've mostly finished college, and my twin brother had a copy of Atlas Shrugged in his house, dammit man how could you?!?!).

I've gotten a few books on liberalism already - Liberalism and Its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama is incredibly concise and easy to read, by the by - and a book on conservatism which was kinda meh, and today through the Interlibrary Loan system a copy of Moderates: the Vital Center of American Politics from the Founding to Today by David S. Brown, which I sat down to read after dinner when I got home from work today.

So I get to the Introduction of the book, and there's a quote about "Moderate" as a definition on the Urban Dictionary website. UD is an informal, oft-times sarcastic, blunt, and vulgar open source dictionary, been around since the heady early days of the Internet. There can be honest and insightful entries on Urban Dictionary, and the "Moderate" definition could well be considered one.

When I saw that quote, I muttered to myself "That looks damned familiar..."

So I hopped onto Urban Dictionary, something I hadn't done since 2006 I think, and looked up that quote, and goddammit I was the one who wrote it.

This was almost 20 years ago!!!

It's the top ranked definition on the site, which may explain Brown's willingness to quote it. Still, it's getting quoted by professors in their political science/history books. I'm getting the "Mark Twain Pithy Snark" Treatment over here, and damn my ego won't stop jumping up and down.

Now all I need to know is if my edits to the Wikipedia articles on "The Gunfight at the OK Corral" are still up. (checks) Nope, nope they all got edited out years ago. /deep sigh

I am ever so thrilled that my world-view on moderates as a political ideology has had some influence however meager on the discourse. I am a little miffed Brown didn't quote me by name: Dude, it's right there in the byline! Best I can figure, if Brown tried reaching to me through my UD account, it was on an old Selfin.org email I had when I lived in South Florida, and I lost that login ages ago (SEFLIN Freenet shut down by the time I left from there in 2003). By the time this book got published in 2016, he probably had no way to know where I was on the Intertubes. 

Alas, as time flows from then to now...

(long contemplative thought)

OKAY NOW BACK TO READING THAT BOOK! THIS RESEARCH AIN'T GONNA READ ITSELF! FOR THE HORDE!!! LET'S SEE IF BROWN QUOTES FROM RUDE PUNDIT NEXT!!!

Input For Another Round of Blog Award Submissions for 2023

In what is now becoming an annual tradition involving this blog:

Well, it's a new year started and already I gotta think about what to submit to the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards for their Non-Fiction / Blogging category.

Last year, I had looked at submitting five articles from this blog to contend, but found out that FWA was capping ALL submissions to five total. Meaning if I wanted to submit to any of the Short Story categories, I need to limit my Blog submissions to make room.

Well, I do have at least one short I'd like to submit - maybe have something novel-wise to submit in the unpublished categories as well - so I do need to make some hard choices here and weed down aggressively to maybe three blog articles. It doesn't help me that this 2022 was in my personal opinion one of my better blogging years: Unlike previous years where I could easily narrow down to ten or so articles to consider, I have a ton of articles this time I feel are quality work. 

I need a lot more input than usual on this.

So to the nine regular followers to this blog, lemme know which of these articles I ought to submit to the FWA judges:

Deep Scars

The Darkest Habit That Could End trump's Reign of Error

Say It Florida, Gays Exist

Ukrainian Paradox

War Crimes - I do like this personally, it's one of my more heartfelt essays

Grooming Hypocrisy

The Day When Women Become Second-Class Citizens

Dreading the Oncoming Storm - This is the one I submitted to Batocchio for the annual Jon Swift Memorial

DeSantis vs The Right to Think

What Did the Secret Service Know...?

Who's Dat Knocking at Mar-A-Lago? It's the Feds With a Warrant, Go Figure

Emperor Norton versus The Madman - I have a personal fondness for this one, but doubt it will appeal to others

Hoping for trump's Last Chapter - arguably the longest blog article I've ever written, but also one that's all over the place in projection and prediction, it might be too much

All Which Wicked Designs - maybe a more concise anti-trump blog article than the previous one, arguably more poetic

Picture This: trump Is Toast 

Radioactive 

Mississippi Stealing

DeSantis' Cruelty, and Florida's Ruin

The Great Russian Skedaddle

What the Hell We Waiting For

The Mindset of My Schizoid Generation

Escalation and Evasion

The Revolutions Will Not Be Localized

Let the Guilty Verdicts Be Read...

The Hypocrisy of Pickpockets in Florida

Thoughts About the 2022 Midterms

Russia's Dying Dreams

Damn, that's a lot - 27! - to whittle down. Last year, I easily knocked the considerations down to a simple top ten, but this 2022 well it demanded a lot to comment on. Looking back, there was a lot to say about the Russian-Ukrainian war, and a lot more to say about donald trump as his legal woes - and exposure to documents theft and espionage charges! - kicked into high gear around August 2022.

I am thinking "War Crimes" is a lock, I am partial to "Oncoming Storm," but I am keen on a good third essay to submit. Maybe a fourth.

Let me know what you think, please. Comment here if you can, email me your suggestions, make sure there's a subject line in the email so my spam filter won't catch it by mistake, thanks.

Happy new year, peeps!

Update 1/29/23: I've thought it over, my current preferences are "War Crimes," "Day When Women...," "Oncoming Storm," "All Which Wicked Designs," "Great Russian Skedaddle," and "Schizoid Generation." Thing is, I still need to wheedle it down to four of those (the fifth RPLA submission will be my published short story "The Brides of WiFi.").

Update 7/25/23: It's about time for the judging to wrap up for the Semi-finalist grades, and... I just got emails back that "War Crimes" and "Schizoid Generation" did not achieve Semi-finalist status. The first is a bit of a stunner: I consider "War Crimes" one of my more passionate writings I've done. There are no guarantees on how the other submissions are going: some delays can occur if a particular judge is not making deadlines, and it can depend on the volume of submissions they're reading.

Update 7/29/23: I did receive word a few days ago that both "Dreading the Oncoming Storm" and "All Which Wicked Designs" blog articles DID achieve Semi-Finalist status, so I'm feeling better about that. 

Alas, I just got the email today for my published short story "The Brides of WiFi" and that DID NOT achieve Semi-Finalist. I know, I know, short stories are insanely competitive, everybody in FWA has at least one short every year and they all probably submit theirs for judging. It's just... Sigh, being a fiction writer is a dream for me, whereas the blogging is me getting some anger issues off my chest. If I'd gotten even a Semi-Finalist for a work of fiction I submitted for judging, I'd be over the moon.

Update 8/31/23: Heard back from the judges about the remaining two articles in competition. "Dreading the Oncoming Storm" did NOT reach Finalist status. 

That means "All Which Wicked Designs" DID reach Finalist status and that I can be up for another Top Three prize for the Royal Palm Literary Award in Non-Fiction / Published Blog or Article category! We will find out this October at the dinner ceremony how it goes.

Update 10/22/23: Reasonably thrilled to return from the Royal Palms awards banquet as a GOLD winner in the Non-Fiction / Published Blog or Article category! Hopefully they'll email me the digital award thumbnail as soon as the conference ends today.

Here is the award icon! 

Upcoming Projects for 2023

Couple of personal notes intermixed with the blogging: 

Driven by the need to have a printed book to apply Royal Palm Literary Award stickers on the covers, I will be putting together key articles from this blog for publication. I did it before with Surviving the Age of Obstruction back in 2016, and I figure a good follow-up to that would be articles about the rise of trump and the destruction he wrought upon the world for 6-plus years.

...

I shall not use the obvious title "Surviving the Eternal Shitgibbon" since I don't own the trademark on "Shitgibbon," so I DO need a better title to market the damn thing. The subtitle "A Diary of the Trump Years" I think is unavoidable.

I may pull the first book from print, though. It never sold - it had to be the weak title I gave it, and publishing through a bad POD service didn't help - and I want to start fresh.

The other project on my mind is writing a book on American -Isms. Having blogged a bit about libertarianism and pragmatism, I figure I need to define the other major -isms - liberalism, conservatism, socialism, fascism, populism, racism - in our nation's political forums. I want to do this for my niece and nephews, all of whom are in their early 20s and I worry about the disinformation floating out there threatening to suck their brains dry.

So I may be busy this Saturnalian weekend as well as the early months of 2023 getting projects done.

I do know I need to keep blogging here. After all, tomorrow Monday promises to be a busy day.

Input For Another Round of Blog Award Submissions for 2022

Well, it's a new year started and already I gotta think about what to submit to the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards for their Non-Fiction / Blogging category.

There's a limit to the submissions - Five per category - so I'd like to narrow down my favorite 2021 articles some time before February when the early bird submission prices aren't so bad.

So to the nine regular followers to this blog, lemme know which of these articles I ought to submit to the judges:

• Irrational (Already submitted to Batocchio's annual Jon Swift Roundup, and one I've already decided to submit to RPLA no matter what. I just need re-affirmation (grin))
• Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums (I didn't get through even Semi-Finalist status last year with the four I ended up submitting, and I think part of the reason was that they were too partisan in tone. So throwing in a non-political article might help balance things out)
• The Battle of GameStop
• It's the Stuff That's Legal That Should Worry You
• The Big Lie And the One Truth
• Let The Rock Cry Out to Gaetz, No Hiding Place
• The Tragedy In Surfside
• What Would You Have the Ladies Do, O Sexists?
• The Fall of Afghanistan
• Strange Days Inside the Job Lines
• Oakland High Shooting: Red Flags Everywhere

Okay, I know I've got a clunky Comments section here, but if you don't want to post a comment on which ones you'd like submitted, you can tweet me @PaulWartenberg or email p.warten AT gmail. I need to know before the first week of February.

Thank ye, and Happy New Year!

Update 1/30/22: Okay, I've narrowed the choices down to:

• Irrational
• Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums
• The Big Lie and the One Truth
• The Tragedy In Surfside
• Strange Days Inside the Job Lines

Thank you all... um, actually I only got one of you to comment so... I really need to see about making comment posting easier (while avoiding the Chinese spammers).

Update 7/20/22: Bad news, Big Lie and Strange Days did not make the Semifinalist cut. Irrational, Hark!, and Surfside articles did reach Semifinalist status and will now get judged for the Finalist round!

Nice new logo from FWA by the by: 

Update 8/12/22: The Finalist results are in and Holy Forking Shirtballs, people. Irrational and Hark! A Ranking of Nirvana Albums 
made it to the Finalists. I'm a bit surprised/disappointed Tragedy of Surfside did not make the cut, alas. But now I have a reason to attend the Writers' Conference for the awards banquet.

Update 10/23/22: Holy forking shirtballs, Irrational won a silver!

Quick Word: NaNoWriMo 2021 Ongoing

I might not be on this blog much this month because National Novel Writing Month is back and I really really really need to focus on that.

Also, I'm a little pissed at Virginia voters right now and writing that whole state out of my will, WTF Virginia anything Youngkin (sp?) does to screw up your state is going to be on you now.

Also also, I really think Joe Manchin is officially more evil than Mitch McConnell right now because he keeps cutting at his own party's attempts to improve American lives for no other reason than to be an asshole to everybody making less than $77,000 a year.

Also also also, the Qanon nutjobs not only believe now that JFK Jr. is still alive and well and supporting trump but also that John-John's dad JFK (you know, the guy with a fcking rifle shot hole in his fcking head since Nov. 22 1963) faked his public assassination and was set to return this past weekend to publicly support trump for 2024 as well. Never mind the fact that EVERYONE'S SEEN THE ZAPRUDER FILM DOCUMENTING JFK'S GAPING HEAD WOUND, if Jack was still alive he'd be 107 YEARS OLD, which is kind of very very very very very fcking rare to see in a dead guy.

/headdesk

Some Novembers, the shit in the real world can't compete with the sci-fi fantasy stuff I try to write.

Alas, A Writer's Lament 2021

On a personal note: You might remember back in February I asked for input about which blog articles to submit to the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards. They have a Non-Fiction/Blog category and I had placed Silver with them in 2020, and was hoping to make a mark for this year.

I went with four articles (I could max out to five), along with the short story submission "War of the Murder Hornets" to mix it up a little.

Well, the judging panel finally reached back to me and...

You know, I could have sworn the article about the reality of trump having a Presidential Library would have been relevant and coherent enough to get past the Semifinalist stage... /sigh

I had submitted that one along with Not All Heroes Wear Capes about John Lewis' passing, and How America Fell Into the Darkest Timeline of 2020 due to their relevancy and partly non-partisan rancor. They too did not reach Semifinalist levels. /sigh

I haven't heard back about this one - The Five Reasons trump Refuses to Concede - and so I may yet have some good news that my political blogging isn't out of vogue. (Update 8/14: Aaaaannnddddd nope that didn't make Semifinalist either.)

Oh, and they didn't like the Murder Hornets either.

I should note that judging depends a lot of who volunteers to read and score the submissions, which changes every year. It depends a lot on the mood, whims, and personal belief structure of those judges - even as they're required to leave such world-views at the door in order to be impartial - so I may have well gotten a judge or two this time who were ardent trump voters (this IS Florida, alas. Also, "alas" has become my word of the year, please punch me if I keep using it too much).

I served as a judge for a couple of years, before they opened up Non-fiction to Blogging (when they did in the interests of fairness I dropped out so I could submit to that category without conflict). I should mention I judged a lot of Non-Fiction works that I scored harshly due to factors such as "lack of research" and "lack of citations to outside data or materials that could back your claims." I'm sorry, but as a librarian and researcher, I value the ability - the right - to examine the merits of a claim with the facts that prove that claim. I had several Non-fiction books to review where I agreed with the author's opening arguments... and still graded them poor because they failed to cite their facts. Alas. (punch) Owww stop hitting me.

I got one submission from someone who WASN'T a scholar on the subject who claimed his "copyrighting" of an idea on that subject made him an expert (um, no, an expert goes through an educational vetting process towards an accredited degree, and then garners recognition from peers in that field through a series of published works that demonstrate due diligence to facts while generating results that are reproducible by said peers), and the first three chapters for review were mostly about how he gained insight where everyone else hadn't (also, he offered no outside citations). "Death of Expertise" indeed. When I blog, I at least try to provide links to sources that back up what I'm ranting aboot...

That all said, I don't blame the judges if I didn't pass muster this year. I do recognize my rants aren't for everyone, and my writing style perhaps not to their tastes.

As they say in baseball, Better luck next year.

Also, the Rays are poised to win the AL East again this year. Maybe if I blogged about that... 

(gets judges who are Marlins fans) aw DAMMIT!

March 2021: Hi, Ate, Us.

I think that's how you speel it.

Okay, look, I need to take some downtime with the blogging here. I have other writing projects that I *really* need to focus on and this is a distraction from that. 

Just to let the nine followers of this blog know that I submitted four articles to the Florida Writers' Royal Palm Awards for consideration, along with the murder hornet short story, so we'll see how that all turns out.

I will likely return to this blog if anything major happens in the political arena here in Florida or in the world (say, if criminal charges against trump drop in New York or Georgia or DC or something). But in the meantime, keep cool you krazy cats.

 

Question to My Nine Blog Readers

So you might notice that I submit entries to the Florida Writers' Association's annual Royal Palm Literary Awards. I did well last year with earning a Silver in the Non-Fiction Blogging category (and there was much rejoicing).

This year, I feel confident enough to submit around nine of the blog articles I wrote in 2020, although there IS a cost to submitting. In that regard, I am keen on narrowing down my submissions to five this year... and of course I can't agree with myself on which ones to go with.

So I need your input, please and thanks.

Consider from this list of nine articles the five I should submit to RPLA for their Blogging award:

• trump's Public Coup
• This Dark Memorial In Some Discarded Corner of America (I *do* consider this my best possible submission)
• The Five Reasons trump Refuses to Concede
• The trumpian Failure At Presidential Accountability
• Predicting Character: Warren Is Planning For That
• A trumpian Plague of Madness
• Not All Heroes Wear Capes
• Republicans Without a Plan
• How America Fell Into the Darkest Timeline of 2020  

Let me see if I can insert a Poll into this article, otherwise I will request you Add a Comment below to tell which ones you think would pass moral and aesthetic judgment. Email me otherwise, no spam you Chinese marketing bastards.

Sad to say, my Murder Hornet articles won't make the cut...