The book is proving about as popular as I feared it would, though I hope the few of you who have downloaded it find it helpful.
Lately, one of my selected nations has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Belarus is towards the end, written about when I was running out of steam and received the barest mention:
A little larger and inland, landlocked. Ethnically Belarusian and other Euros. 80% Eastern Orthodox, with more Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and various Protestants. An IQ like Lithuanian. Flat and cool. A developed economy where privatization is still in progress. They’re not on the Euro, using the “new” Ruble – theirs, not the Russians. They speak Russian and Belarusian, officially.
And now, oh, no! They have – surprise, surprise – political problems. What country doesn’t?
Here’s how I see the situation with Lukashenko, Putin, and the protesters: for [reasons], what’s happening there is still better than what is happening at the same time in dying Amerika. Watch Belarus. Whatever comes of the current turmoil will still be more pleasant than what unfolds in the US.
CLICK for your free ebook! It’s my compilation guide for young Posterity Americans who want to continue to live in civilization, even as the United States continues to slide.
It’s a little rough, especially in the segment (chapter) formatting and in the Intro, but I can work on those items. Note that after I do iron out a few things, she will probably be available for a slightly higher price. Grab your free first edition today, right now. Then, kids, get going!
The first edition of GET OUT! is primed and ready, pending one more little check. It’s, at this version, a cobbling of what has run here previously, with a few appended notes. Look for that ASAP.
Also, I submitted a new column to TPC this morning. I’ll have that when (if) it runs.
More to come and thanks for checking. Thank you, in particular, for yesterday’s heavy traffic regarding the final GO! segment and Scott’s necessary FP column!
I’m still working on the final segment, which should appear at this site soon. Then, after a few edits and an intro, I’ll foist a quick EZ e-book on the unsuspecting world. Subsequent improvements may lead, eventually, to something on Amazon.
Plain and simple. The ideas within are not appealing to those who seek out visual “fluff.”
Tom is coming back, in a new novella. I have just finished the first, rough draft of AURELIUS. I would list the anticipated publication date, but I thought it would already be out now. We’ll say a little later in 2020. It’s a prequel to THE SUBSTITUTE, set about a year before the events of that book, and a fast-paced action story. It’s much shorter than the SUB. And, it’s told in Tom’s first-person. You won’t want to miss it.
I also have, among many other projects, several additional works of fiction in various states of draftiness. Look for those when you see them.
After seeing the unusual cover picture, I did not know what to expect. The author did not disappoint, it was an interesting read for me, for sure. His writing style and characters remind me a bit of Stuart Woods – I’m glad I bought this book!
Thanks, Jenn!
I have some edits prepared and underway to make the reading a little easier. Look for those soon and when you see them. Also, I am happy to announce the following tentative progress:
AURELIUS: Coming early in 2020; a Tom Ironsides (first person) novella and prequel to THE SUBSTITUTE; about 1/3 – 1/2 finished and rapidly gaining ground.
THE HUNTING OF ???: Also for 2020; another Ironsides’s adventure in the run-up to THE SUBSTITUTE (and AURELIUS); a novelette or shorter novella; about 1/2 finished.
SANGUINIS LEX: Another substantial novel that I hope to have out in the coming year. It’s a blended-genre book set in the Ironsides’s world, though only very briefly featuring him (and Dandy and the Bass Slayers…); the expression of an idea I have had since very early in the Century. It’s a dark and dangerous ride into a most uncomfortable subject. But hey, half the blending is romance, so there’s that. “Sanguinis Lex” roughly translates to “the law of the blood,” if that helps give any hints. This one is purey in draft form – they’re all in draft form – and it’s about (maybe) 1/5th complete, in an incomplete way. A most pressing literary endeavor.
As always, there will be more drivel here, perhaps with a few structural changes (like I always threaten); and look for the first TPC column of 2020 next week – a return to non-fictional views on the affairs of the nation, unique and interesting to be sure.
Yes, it’s here – the final month of 2019. Christmas is coming. What better gift to give than the hottest CIA – to – substitute teacher novel of the year, THE SUBSTITUTE? There’s plenty of shipping time left, so order as many as you can afford.
Okay, this week look for TPC and more. Carry on. Happy Sunday.
I’ve completed my mark-up of THE SUBSTITUTE. Hopefully, I’ll have a few minor corrections made by this evening. The plot is utterly unchanged. The pagination will be adjusted. I’m fixing a few typos. And, I decided that Vicky only needs to get engaged twice once. The margins are another issue – in some copies, the top is a little short. In others, it’s fine, or at least good enough. I’ll tinker with that.
And, over the Thanksgiving break, I plan to plug away at AURELIUS, a continuation of the Ironsides’s saga. And, there’s another novel simmering. I’m aiming to get one or both of those out sometime shortly after New Year’s.
It takes courage to write a book. Few things are as intimidating as sitting down in front of a blank computer screen day after day and trying to fill it with something worthwhile. Perrin Lovett is doubly brave. He has written an original, exciting, entertaining story. But he also had the courage to take on the most sacred cow in the vast American herd – the public schools. THE SUBSTITUTE gives us a vivid, realistic, inside look at the failing public schools based on real, day-to-day experience. Many non-fiction studies of public education have been appeared in the past few years. But THE SUBSTITUTE is the only novel on the subject I’m aware of that compares to the famous “muckraker novels” of the early 20th Century that exposed such social evils as child labor, worker safety, and political corruption. Writers like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens changed America by using fictional truth to expose the social ills they addressed. I hope that Perrin Lovett’s novel will have a similar effect on how we look at public schools, which demand an ever greater bite of tax revenue while producing an ever worse result.
Perrin Lovett is a natural story-teller, with a superb command of language and a tone, sardonic at times, that is appropriate to his subject. And he has created a splendid protagonist, Dr. Tom Ironsides, the substitute of the title. Dr. Ironsides is also Colonel Ironsides, retired from the Marine Corps and from subsequent “black ops” with the CIA. He is an academic, trained in the Classics, and a warrior, trained to function in a world where survival demands competence.
At first I was concerned how Lovett would get such an engaging character from the battlefield against terrorism to the battlefield against ignorance. But he does it quite well, quite credibly. Ironsides is one of those people with the self-confidence and the idealism to want to spend his later life setting things right. What better venue for his knowledge, skills, and natural authority than the schools? But since he’s not officially certified, he has to start out teaching as a full-time substitute. As a substitute, he covers many different grade levels and subjects, giving the reader a genuine cross-section autopsy of an unsustainable system. It’s crushed by its own bureaucracy, treats its students more like inmates of a prison, destroys love of learning, and drains the heart out of the teachers. Most of them love their kids and aspire to teach them well, but they’re over-burdened with ever more testing and data-keeping and bureaucratic procedure. Instead of making the classroom a place of excellence in learning, public schools are creating sinkholes of mediocrity.
I won’t spoil the ending except to say it’s very satisfying. It’s fictional, of course, but it ends the only way the whole national public school debacle can end if America is to remain a strong, free, prosperous, self-governing nation. Only a well-educated people can keep it that way. If we do follow the new course described in THE SUBSTITUTE, we’ll have Perrin Lovett to thank.
Wow. That feels like a heavy responsibility. For my part, I’ve started making a few minor changes to the book. First, there are always little improvements to make, my pedantic CYA in the Afterword aside. Second, the formatting needs a little work, which I can accomplish soon. (For that, I blame the computer and the template).
It takes courage to write a book. Few things are as intimidating as sitting down in front of a blank computer screen day after day and trying to fill it with something worthwhile. Perrin Lovett is doubly brave. He has written an original, exciting, entertaining story. But he also had the courage to take on the most sacred cow in the vast American herd – the public schools. THE SUBSTITUTE gives us a vivid, realistic, inside look at the failing public schools based on real, day-to-day experience. Many non-fiction studies of public education have been appeared in the past few years. But THE SUBSTITUTE is the only novel on the subject I’m aware of that compares to the famous “muckraker novels” of the early 20th Century that exposed such social evils as child labor, worker safety, and political corruption. Writers like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens changed America by using fictional truth to expose the social ills they addressed. I hope that Perrin Lovett’s novel will have a similar effect on how we look at public schools, which demand an ever greater bite of tax revenue while producing an ever worse result.
Perrin Lovett is a natural story-teller, with a superb command of language and a tone, sardonic at times, that is appropriate to his subject. And he has created a splendid protagonist, Dr. Tom Ironsides, the substitute of the title. Dr. Ironsides is also Colonel Ironsides, retired from the Marine Corps and from subsequent “black ops” with the CIA. He is an academic, trained in the Classics, and a warrior, trained to function in a world where survival demands competence.
At first I was concerned how Lovett would get such an engaging character from the battlefield against terrorism to the battlefield against ignorance. But he does it quite well, quite credibly.
Ironsides is one of those people with the self-confidence and the idealism to want to spend his later life setting things right. What better venue for his knowledge, skills, and natural authority than the schools? But since he’s not officially certified, he has to start out teaching as a full-time substitute. As a substitute, he covers many different grade levels and subjects, giving the reader a genuine cross-section autopsy of an unsustainable system. It’s crushed by its own bureaucracy, treats its students more like inmates of a prison, destroys love of learning, and drains the heart out of the teachers. Most of them love their kids and aspire to teach them well, but they’re over-burdenedwith ever more testing and data-keeping and bureaucratic procedure. Instead of making the classroom a place of excellence in learning, public schools are creating sinkholes of mediocrity.
I won’t spoil the ending except to say it’s very satisfying. It’s fictional, of course, but it ends the only way the whole national public school debacle can end if America is to remain a strong, free, prosperous, self-governing nation. Only a well-educated people can keep it that way. If we do follow the new course described in THE SUBSTITUTE, we’ll have Perrin Lovett to thank.
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