Free Republic

Greetings Freepers. I'm posting a 100% self-serving vanity because I suspect I'm going to need some help. My most recent novel delves a little into politics and as the reviews begin to come in, I'm already getting flack for conservatism. It so happens that the reviewer left a five star review, but because I've submitted the novel to about two hundred literary-type reviewers, bloggers, etc, I suspect there will soon be a deluge of left-leaning reviews. So I wanted to make the same offer here as to all the book reviewers and bloggers who have just received their copies. I'll...

It’s damn nice to be in the hands of an author who leaves nothing to chance. Who knows how to convey a thought that is deeper than the words he uses to convey it. Consider this sequence: “I couldn’t stand another of those damned prayer sessions without bursting out with the news that I’d been laying his wife so frequently that the only excitement left in it was the increasingly likely possibility that we’d be found out.” The other man, though, is kind and generous, and this quickly follows: “By the time I left I disliked Harding because he had...

...Most of us think in terms of Nature vs. Nurture. We have genetic traits that give us something to work with, and the environment we live in shapes us. Scott Jurek adds a dimension: he’s an agent in his own life. His will is equal to or greater than the other forces, and the success he’s achieved, the records he’s set, the boundaries he’s pushed, have been all him. - See more at: http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/2013/09/21/eat-and-run-book-review/#sthash.CxJOT43m.dpuf

The complexity of Tom Franklin, the mesmerizing exposition of Donald Ray Pollock, the gutwrenching poignancy of Ron Rash’s One Foot in Eden, all in one story: The Old Mechanic, included in Crimes in Southern Indiana, by Frank Bill. Many reviewers have written about how powerfully Frank Bill charges through the gate. The first story sets a pace that will damn near exhaust you. And just as I was beginning to wonder if Frank Bill had enough dexterity and depth to slow it down and make me think hard, I turned the page to...

Think back to the last time you listened to the nightly news and heard a story about an eight year old girl that was missing for two weeks, and then found in a shallow grave with evidence of having been raped. The grave turned out to be in the back yard of a “person of interest” identified within a day of the child’s disappearance. Why? Because he was a registered pedophile. When you heard that story, did you wish our society had tried harder to help the child rapist-turned-murderer? Or did you wish we were a stronger, less tolerant society?

A novel about justice. Set in small town Wyoming in 1971 and unfolding in a single day, Cold Quiet Country explores corruption, morality, and revenge. Published by MP Publishing from the Isle of Man. Edited by Guy Intoci. Please be warned, the novel's main theme is delivering justice to sexual predators, and the beginning is quite coarse. My hope is that by dealing with the subject matter honestly, I can increase awareness and encourage victims to speak out. If the introductory chapter piques your interest, please consider helping me expand my reach by recommending the page to others. I appreciate...

Flagstaff nights are cold; I drink a quarter of my flask of Jack in two gulps. There’s a crew of secessionists in the cabin behind me, bitching about the same old. It’s endless, and that’s why it’s got to end. I’m on the porch wondering when I should tell the boys to get lost. They’ve got guns, but won’t use them. They’ve got the same reasons to be pissed as I do. A tax code seventeen thousand pages long, for shit’s sake. But they’d rather suck beer and fart than defend themselves against the almighty Machine. And what am I...

Rereading “Resistance to Civil Government,” as I turned the pages and absorbed Thoreau’s words, I heard the unmistakable ruffling of rotten clothes filled with old bones. I realized the reverberation, which at first began as a mild, almost imperceptible sliver of sound, and grew to a thunderous dry-clanking rumble by the final pages, was the dead thinker finally flipping in his grave. Thoreau begins “Resistance” by voicing the transcendental belief that as human beings become enlightened, their need for governmental authority diminishes. Although government in some form is presently necessary, it will disappear as individual Americans take ultimate responsibility for...

Like most Americans I naturally shrink from death. Whether it is my mother’s cancer or Elisha calling down wild bears to rend 42 youths, death is an ugly event—a solemn event—better left to God’s administration. This aversion is natural to Americans. Our free and wealthy nation has enabled generations to live to maturity without ever being required to personally defend freedom or face evil. Protected by an all-volunteer military ready to perform the dirty, hard work of maintaining freedom, generations have dined on gourmet liberty, and left the restaurant with the bill on the table. The last war to affect...