They say never read your reviews…
So… I got an Instalaunch, thanks to Sarah, and one of my readers sent me a link, laughing.
I think I tripped somebody’s trigger with the latest Grey Man novella, Down South, which is on the sidebar…
Gotta admit that’s the FIRST time I’ve ever been call fascist! 
Sigh… Such is the life of an author who doesn’t ‘toe the line’ of the left and write the message fiction with the ‘correct’ characters (per their whims, day to day).
These sort of people are fascist wanna-be’s. They’re just projecting.
America was a nicer place before we went soft on crime in the 1960’s.
I think it unfortunate that dictionaries drifted from prescriptive and definitive to *descriptive. This allows usage to warp and redefine terms a la Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Hence, fascist, describing an economic and societal system, has become a synonym for brutal totalitarianism. A similar bastardization allows masked, brutal totalitarians to call opponents *fascist.
That’s just a sign that rounds are on target. It was a great read. Thanks!
Well, congratulations!
I think it’s pretty wonderful that your work was significant enough to them that they felt compelled to make a remark. It’s a milestone I hope one day to reach.
Query: do you have to clear each comment individually? (I see the note that the site uses Akismet to reduce spam.)
You made a comment once about having gotten an unusually large amount of Chinese or Russian spambots, and having to clear through that.
I use Blogger, and the filter I have set up means I have to clear each comment individually. About two weeks ago, I found I had missed a bona-fide comment made at the end of July!
I get so few comments on my blog that I definitely want to encourage them, not send them to Coventry.
I have seen that profile pic somewhere under a different screen name. That guy’s a loon.
You can always judge a man not by his friends, but by the quality of his enemies. A good man will never have enemies who are anything but petty and childish. A bad man will have enemies that are legion. Who it is that dislikes a man reveals much about the man himself.” ~ Wicasta Lovelace
“Drlvel?” “Drlvel” you say? I’ll have none of it! Drivel would be all well and good, But I shall not stand for you producing drlvel! (Poor little Byzantine General was all excited and panting with his little heart going pitty-pat in his sunken chest when he typed his review.)
Oh, and by the way, I’m off to buy a copy based on this twit’s review. I’ve never read anything you’ve written, have no idea what the series is about, and may wind up just using the book to swat cockroaches, but I’ll be sticking a thumb in the eye of this twit.
Ah – you’re in for a treat. I’d highly recommend reading “The Gray Man – Vignettes” first, and then the rest of the series in order. Great story and well told.
Hilariously erroneous assessment.
While I have that book, I haven’t yet read it. I’ll need to bump it up to next in the queue. By the way. What’s your favorite badge flavor?
The solution is simple. The Gray Man must discover and join antifa. Then go on a wild rampage righting wrongs saving illegals, crushing those foul right wingers.
You will then be brought back into the fold of the righteous.
You will have toed the line and followed the likes of Stalin, Karl Marx, Pol Pot, Mao, Fidel etc.
Keep on shoving a sharp stick in the eyes of loony left Jim!
What’s your favorite badge flavor?
LOL
All- Thanks for the comments…LOL Pat- Askimet clears most of the them itself. I only have to clear the ones that hit the spam trap. Jim- Um… Peppermint? 🙂
Posted from my iPhone.
At a superficial level, the guy has a point. The characters are LEO’s. They kill people with very few consequences. For many of us, including me, that’s generally a bad thing.
However, those of us who really like the Cronin saga like it for completely different reasons. I recall reading the very first story, where Jesse and John are in the contest. Those characters and the relationship between them hooked me from practically the first page. It’s a very old fashioned story, about warriors and family. Not something much appreciated by the guy who made that comment.
I read your latest and it was fun, I have re-read the series three times over the years so when a new book is released the parts all fit together in my old man brain. Now what puzzles me is the Badge Licking thing, I understand the drivel if the BZGeneral doesn’t like your story but Badge Licking what’s up with that, is it still attached to the lawman’s shirt or does he take the badge off? Is that one of those multi-gender perversions of the aunty-faz ?
Anyway, thanks for the great stories and keep them coming.
“ByzantineGeneral”?
Weren’t they all a bunch of backstabbing traitors?
Nice of the douche to self-identify.
Also, Goose’s comment from Top Gun comes to mind:
“They were abused children!“
Be honest…it made you grin when you read it. I for one am honored to know this particular badge licking fascist. Keep up the good work.
Kiss your Hugo award goodbye, you literal nazi mcfacist!
Heh
The “general” looks like he would be the first one to call the cops if anything happened that caused him to be scared, like another adult disagreeing with him about anything, because he “felt threatened”.
Some people should be prohibited from adult interactions due to lack of understanding of reality.
So someone calling himself a “Byzantine General” is calling you a fascist?
This, this is a sure sign of the continuing failure of the American Educational System.
Byzantine General… well, the only not-messed-in-the-head Byzantine General I ever heard about was Belisaurius, who would probably think the Grey Man was being too light-weighted towards his enemies, with BG leaning more towards crucifixion and mass slaughter of enemy fighters and a good salting of the earth after said mass slaughter of enemy fighters…
Heh. Pull a David Drake. Have a Belisaurius style general take over anti-drug operations for some fictional President who has an ex-call girl as first lady. And then show the libtards exactly how to conduct a drug war…
I want to read this. Probably more than anyone wants to write this. Certainly, when I think about writing this sort of thing, it becomes a bit too masturbatory to hold my attention long enough to write. I mean, when you boil it down to “and then Obamacare was implemented with a ” Harris/Blokhin/Eichmann/Stroop ” style substance abuse treatment program”, there’s no plot or character to hold the attention of anyone who isn’t simply really into that sort of fantasy.
And wasting time and energy fantasizing isn’t going to move the dream any closer to reality.
David Drake? Sounds more like a John Ringo story.
In fact, Drake seems to be mellowing big time in his recent books. Maybe too much so: Though Hell Should Bar the Way is the first book I’ve read where the actual original author inserts a Mary Sue into his own universe.
Give’em hell!
Got to thinking, and badge licking inspires a serious question.
My impression is that the books are less ‘official police use of force fetishized above all else’, and more of a continuum that sees LEO force, vigilante force, military force, self defensive force, etc… as a continuum of options societies use to maintain a certain standard of civilization.
So I see a great deal of complexity in how the books handle the issues, and nuance in how the humans are described. I’m wondering how much of what I see is me reading in my own biases?
@Bob … yes, I think that is exactly the point … a continuum of options. Sure there are no LEO bad guys in any of the stories … on our side of the border. I don’t care. Frankly, I like the straight-up white-hat, black-hat appeal of the thing. It’s part of the attraction and the thing that can get me all misty-eyed in many places in the books.
All- Thanks! Bob/Kenny- It is options, and how they may or may not play out. It’s small town Texas, not Chicago, et al. Otherwise, half the cops or more would have to be bad guys/girls. My characters are composites of people I know/have known. The large majority are good folks, working hard to do the right thing. And many of them have to live with the nightmares of things they’ve done.
Posted from my iPhone.
Hey Old NFO;
Honestly take it as a compliment, it means that you “triggered” someone and that is a good thing because you forced them to go to their safe place because their “feelings are hurt”. “A snowflake a day keeps a democrat away……or something like that anyway, LOL
“Badge Licking….”
Hmmm.
These are candy or chocolate molds.
Don’t use the flavoring called, “Liberal Tears” because of extreme bitterness.
https://www.amazon.com/Cybrtrayd-Life-Party-J108-Instructions/dp/B00FS7OGPA/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=police+badge+candy&qid=1568157259&s=grocery&sr=1-6-catcorr
https://www.amazon.com/Cybrtrayd-Life-Party-J031-Instructions/dp/B000EJRA9Q/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=police+badge+candy&qid=1568157259&s=grocery&sr=1-4-catcorr
Bob- LOL, didn’t think about THAT…
John- Oh wow… really???
Yesterday I was called a socialist! I admit it got under my skin for a time. I agree with McChuck that this is those people projecting yet there is something else to it. It reminds me of the French Revolution, specifically where the originators of the revolution, after seeing the rivers of blood and the horrors, decided to limit their participation. Their decision gave cause for the more fanatical to turn their wrath against them.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Only a fool tries to please everyone.
Fascist!
You’re obvs over the target.
Awww, you made a liberal (or sovereign citizen) feel insecure.
Good job!
Wow.
The guy is projecting his licking fetish, eh?
Murph/Ed- Tank you, tank you! 😀
Poor ByzantineGeneral. You harshed his mellow. Shame on you. I sentence you to write at least three to four more books this next year for us plebes. Just because you’re well-to-do, well-connected, and educated doesn’t let you escape with an easier punishment!
The beatings will stop when the morale improves!
BTW, your tripe-spewing troll may have taken his moniker from an interesting conceptual and real-world problem called “The Byzantine General’s Problem”. Deals with distributed problem solving. Interesting rabbit hole.
Though, you being you, may already be familiar with it…
WN- Well to do??? What are you smoking? I’m a retired sailor… LOL Re the The Byzantine General’s Problem, that gets into recursives, and in a group of three it only takes ONE traitor to sink the whole plan… sigh
Ah dunno. Seems to me he hit the Haiku button.
🙂
BobF- Good point!