My book Always a Next One: true stories of dog fostering has been named one of four finalists in the Non Fiction/Animals category for the 2013 Readers' Favorite International Award contest. It's a great honor just to have made it this far. Authors from all over the world enter the contest each year. More books and authors entered this year's contest than ever before. One Readers' Favorite review said the following: "Always a Next One" is a wonderfully written story of a family's involvement with taking in foster animals until their permanent homes are found. Readers who like Herriot's animal stories will be drawn to John Leonard's writings and will want to read more than the sample chapter of dog stories featuring Leonard's beloved Ox at the book's end.The writing in each story is consistent and not maudlin and the animals' characters come through believably. Simone the cat is a cat, not a human in disguise. However, this year's competition is more formidable than ever. The other three finalists also earned five star reviews. Furthermore, the judges may decide none of the finalists merited the gold medal. Just because the medals exist for each category doesn't mean they must be awarded. The winners will be announced September 1st. Finalists are introduced and invited to the stage. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medalists also receive a physical award. The banquet will be held November 23rd in Miami, timed to coincide with the Miami Book Festival International. A visit to Miami in November sounds really nice! … [Read more...]
A review of The Lone Ranger
Full disclosure: I was a huge fan of The Lone Ranger when I was a kid. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels could do no wrong, in my eyes. Now, fast-forward forty years. As a writer, I know it's strictly forbidden to speak poorly of your critics. But then it occurred to me that these aren't critics of my novels, so I should feel free to speak my mind. So I must ask professional critics who gleefully savaged Disney's The Lone Ranger: did we watch the same movie? The Lone Ranger has been described as a "clunky two hour grind", a "runaway train", an "unholy mess with slapstick antics", something that "not even Johnny Depp can rescue." Only the guy at Forbes got it mostly right: The Lone Ranger is a "fun summer ride." His only mistake was to say Pirates of the Caribbean was a better film. Let's face it: Pirates was a lot of fun but in reality the first movie had no plot. The entire movie was literally based on a two-minute ride in an amusement park. I never bothered watching any of the sequels. Johnny Depp wasn't just the best thing going in that quartet of movies; he was all Pirates had. And yet, that was more than enough to sell tickets. By comparison, The Lone Ranger actually tells a story. No, it wasn't perfect. The scene with the rabbits was bizarre and disturbing, and the little kid dressed as the Lone Ranger could have been edited out with no harm to the main story. No, it was nowhere near as brilliantly conceived as Memento, not flawless executed like LA Confidential, or as quite as funny as The Princess Bride. But it didn't have to be. … [Read more...]
The attempted extortion of Paula Deen
[Originally published at American Thinker 6/30/13 -- article corrected to name Food Network as a sponsor who dropped Ms. Deen as opposed to the Food Channel] The real story behind the Paula Deen scandal can be summed up in a single word: greed. The American judicial system and the media are being used as formidable weapons in a brazen attempt to extort money from Ms. Deen, in my opinion. This isn't a story about racism. It's all about the money. The mainstream media have reported with glee only some of the gory details as Paula Deen's financial empire continue to crumble. The Food Network, Wal-Mart, Target, and the publisher of her bestselling cookbook all have abruptly terminated their relationship with Ms. Deen. The firestorm erupted after it was widely reported that Ms. Deen gave a deposition in a civil lawsuit in which she admitted using the N-word. Rarely if ever mentioned by the national press is the context in which the word was used, or the reason the deposition became public knowledge. No one is interested in defending the use of that particular word, including this writer. But for the record, the specific instance in which Ms. Deen admitted to using that specific word was in the privacy of her own home, used to describe a robber who had pointed a gun at her head. The mainstream media also doesn't seem to care that Ms. Deen could easily have lied about that specific incident, yet chose to tell the truth under oath. Apparently there's a zero tolerance policy when certain people use the forbidden N-word. Never mind that the epithet was uttered … [Read more...]
The Paula Deen bandwagon
Today Atlanta mayor Kasim Reid just made it official. Everybody and their brother is taking shots at Paula Deen. Reed went on Meet the Press and declared that her past use of the "N" word was "very unfortunate" and "totally unacceptable." The Food Network already fired her. Even my least favorite political cartoonist jumped on the bandwagon, this time associating celebrity cook Paula Deen with the Ku Klux Klan. And yes, the cowardly Mike Luckovich once again left the comment section closed. I don't own any of Ms. Deen's cookbooks, but I might have to buy one on general principle, even though I have no plans to use it. The politically correct have spoken unanimously to condemn Paula Deen for an apparently unforgivable sin. I loathe political correctness. I only care about fairness and justice. Now when I was a kid, growing up in Savannah, I'm sure that I heard the "N" word a quite a few times. I'm also sure that I've used it in the distant past myself when I was very young and foolish, before I understood the insult it represented. Since I can't remember when and I'm not sworn under oath, I won't be apologizing for any specific incident, or for being stupid when I was younger. I will say that I'm sorry that I've ever used the word. Mea culpa. Now, I'll politely ask you to get over it. It's not like the "N" word has been scrubbed from our culture. In fact, the last time I heard the "N" word used with alarming frequency was when I watched a Quentin Tarantino movie called Pulp Fiction. The "N" word is also very popular with rap artists. In … [Read more...]
Separation of church and state
This video is profoundly disturbing on a couple of levels. While an unglued, obviously deranged woman was busy assaulting innocent people, she was also claiming to teach children about a subject she clearly knows very little, if anything about -- the U.S. Constitution. It never ceases to amaze me, how many people can believe they know things with certainty, yet are absolutely, and often provably wrong. Take, for example, my atheist friends enamored with the phrase "separation of church and state," often citing it as their favorite part of the Constitution. The problem is that the phrase "separation of church and state" cannot be found in the U.S. Constitution, or in any of its amendments. Here's my most cynical offer -- I'll pay one thousand dollars reward to anyone who can show me where the exact words "separation of church and state" appear in the Constitution. No, I'm not being generous. I'm very confident I'll keep my money because I know where the phrase originated, verbatim; it came from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to assure the Danbury Baptists in Connecticut that freedom of religion in our new nation would never be limited to one official church. And don't try to tell me they are in there somewhere, in spirit. If you're an atheist, you don't believe in spirits, do you? The words specifically in our Constitution guarantee freedom of, and certainly not from, religion. "Separation of church and state" only meant there will never be a state-sponsored church, like the Anglican Church was in England. That meant Catholics, Baptists, … [Read more...]
