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.
When not wearing a goofy comic book mask, like, ahem, the rest of you, I’ve been slowly adding to the Education Resources Page. I have a few more books. And I have a link for homeschooling in Europe (to include in Poland!). In a week or three, I’ll have a new column on the schools. Look for that here, at TPC, or … at a new outlet?
And, here’s a first:
Przetłumaczone mechanicznie na język Polski:
Kiedy nie noszę głupiej maski z komiksu, jak reszta z was, powoli dodawałam do strony zasobów edukacyjnych. Mam jeszcze kilka książek. I mam link do nauczania w domu w Europie (do włączenia w Polsce!). Za tydzień lub trzy będę miał nową kolumnę o szkołach. Poszukaj tego tutaj, w TPC, czy … w nowym sklepie?
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.”
Mary Trump, that is. The girl done sold a million books(!!!) in a day!
Mary L. Trump’s tell-all book on her uncle President Donald Trump sold more than 950,000 copies in its first day of release.
Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man sold more than 950,000 “through Tuesday, July 14” — the book’s first day.
“The combined sales figure includes pre-orders and first day sales of print books, ebooks, and e-audiobooks in the U.S., and is a company record,” Simon & Schuster declared, adding that its “ordered a 14th printing of the book that, when completed, will bring the number of hardcover copies in print to more than 1,150,000.”
As a middling-worst-selling novelist and a meddling non-fictionado, let me say, I’M JEALOUS!
Seriously, think what you will of the book, the numbers alone are impressive.
Really seriously, if I ever mirror this performance, I will become rather difficult to find.
There’s something to the trend of Amazon both publishing and selling books, particularly fiction. My debut novel is doing okay, and apparently making waves now, but I’m not in the league of Amazon’s latest super author, Dean Koontz.
When Dean Koontz’s book contract expired last year, his stature as one of the country’s top-selling authors made him a hot target for several major publishing houses. He chose Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -1.16%
It was a surprising move because it means his new books likely won’t appear in retail stores, which generally boycott Amazon AMZN -1.16% -published titles. But Mr. Koontz is banking on Amazon’s vast retail machine to get his work to readers, whether in physical or digital formats.
“Maybe I won’t be in some stores or make the New York Times best-seller list, but I’m willing to take that risk and I think we’ll sell more books in all formats,” Mr. Koontz said.
Amazon dominates the U.S. book-retail market—accounting for over half of all new books sold in October, according to research firm Codex Group—but it is also a force as a book publisher. Signing up blue-chip authors like Mr. Koontz could make the tech giant an even more formidable threat to the traditional industry, led by publishing houses such as Penguin Random House, which is controlled by Germany’s Bertelsmann SE, ViacomCBS Inc.’s Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Publishers, which is owned by Wall Street Journal parent News Corp.
Mr. Koontz’s first novel for Amazon is expected to publish March 31. He already has published a collection of short stories, “Nameless,” that generated over a million downloads in the first month after its debut last November. The stories are available only as e-books and audiobooks.
Mr. Koontz, whose over 100 books include hits like “Odd Thomas” and “Watchers,” isn’t the only high-profile writer Amazon Publishing has snared. In 2018, Patricia Cornwell signed a two-book deal; the first novel, “Quantum,” was published last October and enjoyed brisk downloads despite poor reviews. Both Mr. Koontz and Ms. Cornwell are in the top 25 of all currently published U.S. adult fiction writers, as measured by the size of their most dedicated fan bases, according to consumer surveys by Codex.
I am not in the, uh, top 20. But, getting there! (?) A million sales in the first month; I think I could handle that. Go Koontz!
1) The buildings get bigger and nicer as the years pass.
2) Per volume, there are fewer and fewer books. By 2019, they have vast open spaces, full of beanbags and model airplanes, with a small selection of titles strewn here and there.
3) The students used to look like students. Now, they look like a) they just rolled out of homeless shelters, b) they’re on spring break, or c) they’re ready to cruise the red light district.
Mind you, that this is ANDOVER, the nation’s preeminent private school. The pattern repeats at public “schools,” colleges, and community libraries across the country. B&N is a coffee shop with a toy store attached. This all rather angers someone who writes books. Nice pictures though.
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.
