John Robinson

Well, the mid-year elections are finally over, the victors are popping champagne corks while the losers eye high bridges, and the Presidential political season is upon us again. Lock your vaults and hide your daughters.

It seems every politician, known and unknown, from both sides of the aisle, is throwing his (or her; hi Hillary!) hat into the ring. Or since hats are passe, "forming exploratory committees." You know. Like a colonoscopy.

The runup to the Presidential choosing is policial Darwinism at its most elemental. "Dog eat dog" is too bland a phrase for what we're about to witness; "slash and burn" says it more plainly. And brother, does it seem to take forever, this time we're entering. If farming season lasted as long, we'd be harvesting green beans the size of dugout canoes. This Chinese water torture we Americans put ourselves through every four years puts me in mind of a childhood memory.

When I was a boy, my family would sometimes take Sunday drives. Long Sunday drives. Endless, bleak, soul-killing, waiting-for-Godot Sunday drives. There we'd be, my dad behind the wheel of our Ford Galaxy (Clark Kent hat tilted at a rakish angle), my mom beside him. In the back seat were my little brother, and yours truly.

Along about the eighteenth hour (or so it seemed) of the drive, my brother and I would grow bored, although "bored" doesn't really say it; that's like calling the firebombing of Dresden a "warmish day." Anyway, Scott would casually throw his leg over mine. I'd toss it back. He'd do it again, with a bit more force. I'd toss it back. He'd stick his tongue out at me. I'd look back and pretend to eat boogers. He'd pinch me. I'd slug him. And so on.

The only thing that could end the fun was my dad, eyes still on the road, screaming obscenities while flailing his arm over the back of the seat, hoping to nail one of us, or both. While this occurred my mom would laugh behind her hand, but I still saw it.

That's kind of like what election season is reminiscent of. Yeah.

For a great piece of proto-SF, download a copy of The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. Written a hundred years before the invention of teh intertoobz, it perfectly limns a society so introverted its inhabitants can only interact with each other over television screens. And then it tells what happens when ,... well, when the machine stops. Chilling.

Hi folks! Just a short note to say the AFCW (American Christian Fiction Writers) book club is voting on my book, Heading Home, this week. If you'd like to vote for it, it's free, and here's the link (please copy and paste into your browser):

acfwbookclub-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Voting ends in two days, Oct 20th. Thanks!

The Southern Festival of Books was a ton of fun this past weekend. Sheaf House had a booth there, and traffic was brisk. Tell you all a quick story about something that happened Saturday afternoon that was just as fun.

One of Sheaf House's authors, Don Furr, has a novel coming out in March called Quest for the Nail Prints. It's a time travel story about three modern day travelers for who find themselves sharing Jesus's last week in earth. It's a heck of a tale, and Don's a heck of a marketer. He owns a company that does trade show exhibits, and has an imagination that just won't quit.

Three years ago he bought a 1981 DeLorean, and he and his shop foreman tricked it out so it looks exactly like Doc Brown's time travel car from Back to the Future, I mean inside and out. He uses it to draw crowds at his shows, so he and Penney Carleton, SH's marketing director, convinced Providence Mall in Mount Juliet to let us park it there for our signing.

Let me tell you, it drew the people like flies to honey. I've never seen anything like it. He opened up the gull-wing doors, cranked up the CD player with the movie soundtrack, and people literally came running. We were only supposed to be there from 4:30 to 7, but ended up staying until 8. By then the sun was down, and the car was lit up like Las Vegas. If Don hadn't had to drive it back to Memphis that night, I'll bet we could have stayed until 11, with Don handing out cards and taking pre-orders for his novel, and me selling copies of Heading Home.

The funniest thing was the little kids; you couldn't pry them away from the thing with a crowbar. If we'd been allowed to park it down at the book fest, I have no idea the size of the crowd that 29-year-old car would have drawn!

So yeah, we had fun, and I'd love do it again sometime!

Hi guys. For those of you in the Nashville area, this weekend, October 8-10, I'll be taking turns manning the Sheaf House booth at the Southern Festival of Books; I'll also be signing copies of Heading Home. The event is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Department of Humanties, and coordinators are planning for 20,000 people; I'll be the one in the beard. *G*

Also, on that Saturday, October 9th, I'll be at the Providence Mall in Mt Juliet TN from 4:30-7 PM. There with me will be fellow SH author Don Furr, who's time-travel novel, Quest for the Nail Prints, looks absolutely killer.

Hope to see a few of you there! Thanks.

For those who've wondered what all the controversy was about (and you know who you are!) all three of my Joe Box novels--Until the Last Dog Dies, When Skylarks Fall, and To Skin a Cat--are now available on Kindle. Three bucks a pop; you couldn't find better entertainment at the circus.

Thank ye kindly!

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."--T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Got to thinking recently about the limitations—and freedoms—of writing for the Christian market. Many people don’t know that the works of such Christian luminaries as C.S. Lews, J.R.R. Tolkein, Dorothy Sayers, Flannery O'Connor, G.K. Chesterton, Walker Percy and many others had to compete in the same arena as those of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Agatha Christie, Sinclair Lewis, and more.

The name of the game was "quality," and our Christian brothers and sisters did very well there. With the advent of the CBA in the early 50s, we found a safe haven … but I wonder if we did didn't lose a little something in the bargain as well.

Just one man's opinion; nothing more.