Earth's Hope - and Someone who's Inspired Mine

His name is John D. Liu. You can Google him and find nearly 1000 references to his work over the past decade. But you need to go to the source to really get the message.

Check out either the blog or the website (in particular, the video "Lessons from the Loess Plateau" for "Earth's Hope", the foundation that John has most recently spearheaded in his efforts to disseminate the global ecological lessons he has learned in China and Africa over the past 2 1/2 decades. The image that fronts the website, says it all. We - every citizen of the world today, need to become contributors to "Earth's Hope" - before the promise of that hope is lost.

My novel, "Mai Shangri-La" (available at Amazon) is my rather dystopic view of one global future if we maintain "Business as Usual" in our relationship with the environment. John Liu has shown me that there is another possible future - and it literally is...Earth's Hope.

Educate yourself. Buy my book if you want to be depressed about what could face us. Join "Earth's Hope" if you want to become part of the solution!

Mai Shangri-La - available at

Mai Shangri-La

- an Amazon Print On Demand Title

Why Did I Write "Mai Shangri-La" (Reprise)

Somewhere in the deep, distant past, I wrote about this, but even if it's here in the Archives, it's time to bring the reasons to the top of the heap again.

Why did I write "Mai Shangri-La?

1) Because the world is going to Hell in a Handbasket, and most of us still have our heads in the sand about it. If I can convince ONE reader to be more aware of the possible consequences of modern society's "full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes" behavior - and to take some kind, any kind of concrete action to change his or her behavior, the effort will not have been in vain.

2) Because I want to be able to look my son in the eye when he asks me "where were you when the world was going into the toilet, daddy?" and at least say, "I was working the bathroom plunger, son, to keep the crap from overflowing..."

3) Because I've always wanted to create something that would live beyond me. I've collected books since I was a kid, and many of these old friends have now outlasted their authors - but that doesn't diminish their appeal to me.

4) Because I just had to give writing a shot; to see if I could be the next Frank McCourt. SOMEBODY has to be his succesor - and it would sure be nice to have a way to keep a bit of cash coming in after I hang it up as a teacher...

There was more - a lot more, but that's the gist of it.

Buy my first book to help give me that initial "Boost". Buy my SECOND one (in the pipeline now) only if the first gives you some pleasure, or insights into "the meaning of life" I'm not looking for (much) charity, here.. ;0)

Rob

Buy this Book...

...and help a struggling new author establish a "real" presence on Amazon:)

I need a few sales - and more importantly, a few Reader Reviews, to fuel my next round of Agent Queries. I'm hearing that chapters 1-4 really need excising, but I'm busy right now getting the sequel (The Wayback Machine) ready to submit to ABNA 2 - and the deadline's close!

But as they didn't really ever say "It ain't over 'till it's Over." In the world of POD, I can keep tweaking this thing forever until I get it right - IF I've got a basic vehicle to work with. I think so - but I need some outside opinions. Looking forward to yours!

Time to Fish?

...or Cut Bait?

As a participant in last year's ABNA contest, I recently received an invitation to join the second generation contest, with the entry date coming up fast at February 2nd. My first inclination was to get right to work on The Wayback Machine to whip in into shape for entry. But then, in working through the thread from last year's contestants that never left, I came across references to Authonomy. Being as how I'd just submitted my seventh draft of Mai Shangri-La to Createspace and basically decided that I was done with it except to let it sink or swim on its own merit, I decided to just have a look. Boy, did I get routed onto a alternative-destination siding!

In a nutshell, I joined up, posted four chapters from Mai Shangri-La, and waited for other authors to read my excerpts, give me a few "Attaboys" and then tell me to keep writing. Instead, I got several focussed, perceptive and mildly scathing, and most importantly, generally consistent critiques of the four chapters telling me, in different ways, that I was;

-neglecting the "story" at the expense of the "back story"
-overwriting the hell out of the story that I did manage to commit to paper
(too much description, too many adjectives, etc)
- relying on "tell" rather than "show" at almost every turn, and what is worst of all,
- committing the cardinal narrative writing sin of "infodump"

It seems that I was so passionate about the underlying messages I thought Reuben James's story were illustrating that I didn't trust his story toactually illuminate and reveal those messages. Seems I felt it necessary to hit readers over the head with my concerns for the environment, my dire prognostications for the future if we continue down the "business as usual" path, and my incandescent descriptive prose describing that dystopic future.

Talk about getting taken down a peg or five. To make a long story short, I'm hooked into posting on Authonomy at least several times a day, I'm looking at completely excising at least four chapters from the MSL manuscript, and I seem to be committing myself to an almost complete rewrite to address the concerns that the Authonomy folks have raised.

More on this new path as I follow it. The Wayback Machine's back on the back burner. Let's see if we can whip Mai Shangri-La into the shape that will garner the same consistency of critique from other writers that it has thus far - but this time with a positive spin.

Back to the drawing board!!! Who knows? Maybe MSL will be different enough when I'm done that it will be worth re-submitting to ABNA.

Stay tuned...

Really Close...

...but of course I've said that before.

More importantly, I've decided that this time, I really am close enough (I'm halfway through a "cosmetic" seventh draft polish that I think is where I'll leave MSL for now and move on to other writing projects. I'll make brief notes here about it's status, but leave it at that. I'll also comment briefly on publication progress (and possibly on sales) on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rubisr

I'm not leaving the "Mai Shangri-La" concept behind, though. Instead, I'm going to begin posting here some of the thoughts, beliefs and concerns that have driven this project for the past three years, along with the background reading and activities that have kept it alive.

Underlying everything about MSL is a concern for the state of the environment and a fear, which is growing rather than receding, that we've already passed a number of both environmental and social Tipping Points which mean that the Future is going to be about mitigating the effects of two centuries of excess and learning to cope with the results rather than preventing them.

My first posting along this line will be a commentary on Thomas Friedman's new book "Hot, Flat and Crowded". Friedman's "The World is Flat" figured prominently in the original draft of MSL in how it shaped Reuben James's thinking, and the striking thing for me is how fast and how radically Friedman's emphasis has changed from touting the benefits of a "flat earth" to explaining how the flat earth concept will still be a factor in a world which is Hotter and More Crowded.

Hot, Flat and Crowded. Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar, Strous & Giroux, 2008

http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/files/imagecache/book_midsize/files/jackets/hot_flat_and_crowded.jpg

Jes' Webbin' It: Third Draft'll Nail It?

Jes' Webbin' It: Third Draft'll Nail It?