On protagonists and trouble...

Hi folks,

A fellow writer just posted an article on protagonists and used my material for her article. Check out Virginia MacGregor's blog on writing workshops. Just click on the link!

Blue skies,
Les

Interviewed by Steve Lauden

Hi folks,

Just had a new interview posted over on Steve Lauden's blog. Click on the link to check it out at:


Blue skies,
Les

The Bitch gets censored...

Hi folks,

Just an upfront about what you’ll read—I’m smokin’ hot, pissed off beyond belief, and there will be curse words as you read.

A reviewer--whom I won’t name as none of what happened is her fault in the least—just told me some disturbing news. This person, who very graciously gave my novel, THE BITCH, a great review, emailed me to tell me that she was very sorry but that the newspapers who regularly published her book reviews wouldn’t because of the word “bitch” in the title.

If this wasn’t so sad and even dangerous to our freedoms, it would be laughable. But, I can’t see anything humorous in it at all.

First, the title—THE BITCH—isn’t employed here as the pejorative term commonly used to denigrate women. It’s not even the term when used to describe a female dog. It simply refers to the term ex-cons use when describing the “three strikes and you’re out, ha-BITCH-ual criminal law” where an ex-felon, upon receiving a third felony conviction can be sentenced for up to life imprisonment for that conviction. That’s it. It has nothing to do with women or dogs. It has everything to do with our judicial system…

It’s a title that perfectly describes the story. It’s about an ex-con with two former convictions who’s been put on the spot by a former cellmate to do him a favor—a favor he owes because the guy saved his life back in the joint—and one that, if he’s caught doing it, will result in receiving life in prison, courtesy of “the bitch.” That’s it.

Turns out this word is on newspapers’ hit list of words they won’t print or publish. Except… that doesn’t seem to be entirely true. Daily, I get a list of articles from Google for the words “the bitch” hoping to discover perhaps an article or review of my novel I hadn’t seen. So far, haven’t been sent any for the novel—but, every single day I get a list of ten or more newspaper and other articles about rappers and rap songs and actors/actresses who use the words in songs and other material, often calling each other by this term in catfights on Hollywood Boulevard. My take is that it’s only writers who are using the word in an entirely different context and a totally different meaning that get censored. Guess I shoulda been a rapper or an actress who calls another rapper or actress this—that seems to be okay…

I’d like to send these newspaper geniuses and the rest of the nanny state personnel a copy of George Carlin’s famous bit on words and also a copy of George Orwell’s “1984.” Although, I don’t think it would matter to any of them. I don’t think they have the sense God gave a gnat to get in out of the rain. They certainly don’t think much of freedom of thought or freedom of speech. That’s patently obvious, at least to me. If newspapers ever think about why nobody reads ‘em any more, I might have a clue for them…

I wonder if I wrote a book on female dogs and their care and training, how I’d title that? Sure don’t want the censors after me about my little tome on my cuddly book on Lassie and Timmy…

I wonder what other words are on their censorship lists. Do you suppose “bastard” might be on there? After all, that’s the companion word to “bitch” isn’t it? One’s male, the other’s usually applied to a female. How on earth did the book, BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA ever get talked about in newspapers? Or… is it possible, pejorative words about males aren’t seen to be as evil as those about females? Naw… that would make that a sexist thing wouldn’t it?

My friend, Liam Sweeny, suggested I “change my cover, put a dog nursing her puppies on it,” and I hope he was just trying to be funny. I’m pretty sure he was—Liam doesn’t tolerate idiots any more than I do (sorry, is “idiots” a banned word? Probably… change that to “mentally challenged and prevented from possessing common sense”…). Well, I told him there was no way I was caving in or catering to these morons—my exact words were, “Not changing a thing—fuck ‘em!”

I don’t know what I think I’ll accomplish by posting this. I’m just royally and fucking mad and deeply saddened by the PC idiocy that’s running rampant in our country and destroying the freedoms we used to cherish. Newspapers are supposed to be one of our last bastions of freedom of thought and expression and it’s obvious they’ve abdicated the last vestiges of this. If this doesn’t frighten people I don’t know what ever will.

So, I know that my novel won’t get any newspaper play. Hope you’ll read it and if you like it recommend it to a friend. Just be careful not to let the censors who seem to be among us hear you… it’s for sure no newspaper is going to publicize any arrests by the Thought Police over this. They’d be forced to use the title in the copy…

Maybe I’ll get a rapper to rap about it and hold up a copy in the video…

I’m going to protest by not buying a newspaper today. Oh, wait… I did that yesterday. And yesterday and the day before that and… didn’t work then and probably won’t work now…

What do y’all think about this? No big deal? Big deal? What would you do if it happened to your book? Kowtow and avoid anything in your writing that might be controversial? I don’t think that will happen to the writers I know… Maybe I should have cleared the title with Pravda? If anyone knows how to fight something like this, please let me know.

Fuck ‘em. Censor that, shitheads.

Blue skies,

Les

ALLIGATORS AND CROCODILES ON TV

THE INSIDE STORY ON CROCODILES, ALLIGATORS AND THE TV GUYS WHO RASSLE ‘EM

Hi folks,

If you’re like me and are forced to stay indoors during the daytime and pretend to be a writer, staring out the window at your neighbor’s above-ground pool all day begins to get a bit boring. So, I imagine you’re also like me and put a TV on a table in your writing room where you can look at it occasionally while you whip out your next best-selling novel about meth-crazed minor criminals with hearts of gold.

And, if you’re like me, you start noticing that besides things like the Jerry Springer Show, and CNN (which are basically the same show with different sponsors), there are an awful lot of programs starring alligators and steely-eyed men who search them out to wrestle.

One of the things you may notice is that there are a lot less episodes these days of Mr. Steve Irwin and a lot more of the Gator Boys. After watching a few dozen episodes of each, it’s easy to see why. Besides the fact that Steve Irwin is no longer with us in the flesh, having shuffled off his mortal coil for the heavenly site of Crocodile Paradise (somewhere near Ayre's Rock).

No, it’s because of something entirely different. If you’ll notice, much of the footage of Steve-O subduing crocodiles, took place at his zoo in Australia. They seem to be constantly moving the same alligator to another enclosed cement pond. This poor croc has accumulated more Frequent Mover miles than Hillary Clinton. He’s always being transported to somewhere else, usually because he’s beating up his companion croc. You’d think after awhile, Steve and his crew would catch on that this guy is just plain anti-social and just put him in his own place, but no, every week or so, they find out he’s chewing up his pond mate so they have to gather the crew and a bunch of cameras and move him again.

And, this is why his shows are shown less and less. The first thing he does, is let the audience know just how ferocious these beasts are! Besides the usual warning to “Don't try this at home” (which doesn’t apply to most of the audience who live in non-crocodile or alligator locales and many of those watching have I.Q.s higher than 43 so, while they may vote, they're not prone to rush out and hang a chokehold on a gator), he goes on at length to illustrate just how deadly these beasts are. At this point in time, we’ve seen him feed roughly 263,000 dead chickens to his crocs. It’s pretty much the same each time. He lets us all know that he’s about the only guy in history to ever dare get this close to these killers and then he stands at the edge of the pond and waves a chicken at them. Eventually, they get curious about the guy waving the chicken and are probably hungry on top of it, and they scoot out and lunge at the chicken and snag onto it. Back in the water they go, until the 2:45 show. The fact that they have really short legs and can only lunge about eight inches and that usually tires 'em out, isn't often brought up.

We were pretty well convinced that ol’ Steve-O was pretty much a man’s man, doing all this risky stuff and then this other show came on. The Gator Boys.

This show featured an alpha male and his portly sidekick with a safari hat. Recently, they’ve added a third to the crew, the portly sidekick’s portly girlfriend. She’s the one without a hat.

If you have one of those TVs where you can show two shows side-by-side, take a representative clip from each show and play them simultaneously and you’ll soon see why the Gator Boys and One Dudess have taken the glory away from Steve-O.

When Steve gets ready to capture and remove the bad gator, he gathers his entire crew of 23 people and they all gather around the gator. At his signal, they all jump on the poor creature, covering every square inch of his body so the poor cameraman has no shot of the animal itself and instead, is forced to provide shots of dozens of writhing arms and legs of folks who are smothering the poor gator who has to be wondering what he did to make so many people want to crush him when all he wanted was a couple of drumsticks and a thigh and maybe a scoop of potato salad. All the while guys are leaping onto parts of the gator, Steve-O is yelling about how dangerous all this is and directing each crew member to their six square inches they're to cover. His wife has taken part in the later episodes, and Steve is no male chauvinist pig—not he. She gets to take part in the “capture” herself, usually by taping the croc’s mouth shut while fourteen of the crew hold his jaws shut. Then, once bound by six hundred dollars worth of duct tape and ropes, it takes all 23 of the crew to pick the animal up and carry it to the fence and hoist it over. This feat takes great engineering skill to supervise and all the while we’re told how extremely dangerous this beast is, even though he’s tied up like the Stockholm Syndrome poster girl and how one single misstep could mean certain death for… well, one of the 23 who doesn’t jump back quickly enough should he get loose and go after someone with his bound mouth…

Meanwhile, on your other screen, watch the Gator Boys Plus One Girl in action. The portly one mostly stands on the shore of the lake or pond or swamp, his job to provide commentary on how dangerous all this is to the viewer and the ten-year-old daughter of the pond owner who has obviously been coached by the director to look afraid, but isn't that good of an actress and mostly giggles.

Then, the alpha male shucks his clothes down to his bathing suit and just jumps into the water with one of those sticks with a loop on the end that dog catchers use to snag runaway killer Pekineses with. He swims underwater (being filmed by a defenseless cameraman who doesn’t get enough props at all) until he locates the gator. This takes awhile, as the action keeps shifting back and forth from under the water to the portly guy on the bank who keeps watching alpha male’s bubbles and frets that his buddy may be in trouble since he’s been down there so long. (He never mentions the cameraman who’s been down there just as long and doesn't have a stick with a rope on it.)

Eventually, though, alpha man makes his move, snags the gator and swims him to the edge, handing off the stick to his chunky friend, who then pulls him up. At that point, they take turns walking around the animal to tire him out, and then one of them jumps on him and the other one tapes his mouth shut. (The gator, not the guy, although that's not a bad idea. Maybe tape the portly guy's mouth so we don't have to hear him telling his girlfriend for the 9,023rd time why she can't do this highly dangerous work just yet.) Then, one of them picks up the gator and walks him to the truck. Sometimes, if the animal is say 32 feet long, it’ll take both of them to pick him up, but usually it’s a one-man job. The girl opens the tailgate.

The thing is, though… they didn’t need 23 others to effect this capture. They only needed two guys and a girl who keeps begging to let her in on the fun (which they never do because… well, you know… she’s a girl).

The thing is, the Gator Boys have pretty much revealed that crocs and gators aren’t all that big of a deal to catch. It’s pretty clear it doesn’t require a team of 23 beefy guys to do so.

And, that’s why Steve-O’s show isn’t on that much these days.

I fully anticipate that in the next year or two, a new show will appear with a ten-year-old girl who hunts gator armed only with a mouthful of Juicy Fruit gum and the mystical ability to sooth gators by patting them on the head—the first “Gator Whisperer.” Then, the Gator Boys Plus One Girl will be what we in the writing game call… ancient history.

We’ll see… Meanwhile, keep tuned as next week we’re going to reveal the real reason meth-head low-life criminals are appearing all over the place in bestselling novels. You won’t want to miss that!

Or maybe we'll comment on the Turtle Man who also has a portly sidekick and an accent eerily similar to most of the pilots we've encountered on large planes.We'll go over exciting episodes wherein he grabs feisty racoons by their tails and threatens to turn 'em into hats for ten-year-old boys (who are the basic demographic of his audience). He is amassing a quiet fortune with all the apple pies and boxes of government cheese he's paid with.

Blue skies,

Les

The Bitch by Les Edgerton

The Bitch by Les Edgerton
Review by Elizabeth White - just click on the link above please.

This wonderful review just came out from Elizabeth White. One of her reviews is pure gold. One of the best reviewers in the business! This really made my day.

Hope you enjoy her take on it. She absolutely gets what I was trying to do with this novel.

Blue skies,
Les