Sabbatical

I've taken the first draft of the first nineteen chapters of "Trade" offline. This novel writing experiment has ended for now. In all, I've approached 40 chapters and 100k words. I'll throw the whole mess in a drawer for a pair of months and then approach it with a fresh view and try to decide if it merits a year or more of revision. If not, it's onto something else.

Fitting that this experiment ends on the same day that another experiment, begun a few hundred years ago by some gentlemen farmers near our Atlantic coast, ends as well. Yes, I'm talking about the inauguration, the re-crowning of Emperor Bubbles and that forty-million-dollar democracy funeral in Washington D.C. The smallest margin (still contested) ever to return a president to office. The largest security detail ever for an inauguration. The most expensive party ever, and remember that Roosevelt insisted on a cheap inauguration, cake and coffee, because it was only proper to be thrifty when our troops were suffering in the field. If this president supports our troops, then I'm Swedish royalty. In any case, it's the end of that little experiment called Democracy, the end of the last, best hope...

Sure, you can say that it's not worse than Vietnam, than the guilded age, than the slaughter of "red kids in their teepees," as a great poet once said. But it's hard to see much promise. The Democrats are in disaray and will hardly form a strong opposition. There is no left-wing in this country. Peace is far less preferrable than cheap consumer goods and the drool-inducing, mindnumbing opiate of television, to which most of our populace is hopelessly addicted.

In any case, I digress. I need a good howl at a full moon. A belly full of red wine. Venison steaks marinated in garlic, olive oil (extra-virgin) and sherry. And then I may finish that novel called Trade. Look for an excerpt on www.301media.com in the coming months. Next November I may very well start a new book.

Peace.

DB