Smoke & Mirrors

Paradigm Shift will be released in a few days. Click the photo to enlarge it enough to read the back cover blurb. The American Empire has been slowly crumbling for most of our lives, and this is that story told from the perspective of a national populace that has collectively lost its mind. The story opens with a detailed timeline of the many events that have shaped our economic and consumer culture toward its suicidal end. Paradigm Shift is a personal story of reflection, humor, and compassion that most Americans can easily assimilate into their own personal stories. We have been on this ship of fools together for far too long. It's time to break out the life preservers and hoist the sails before we crash on the rocky cliffs of Republican goals.

Happy New Year, Sarah!

Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix will be released on schedule next week. The earliest copies will be available in print directly from the publisher or in the Kindle format at Amazon. The retail prices will be $17.95 for the 7 x 10 paperback and $6.00 for the Kindle. I do not have any control over whether or not any retailer will discount the book any at all or ever. In the past both Amazon and B&N have offered my previous books at less than retail in a sporadic manner. The book is 382 pages and 212,000 words. The page count was trimmed back a bit by using a smaller font to hold the retail price down. The print version has somewhat more elaborate formatting than the Kindle version, as is often the case with new releases these days. At this point in time, due to the holiday season, I cannot tell you precisely when and where Paradigm Shift will become readily available. We know the bad boys are moving into Congress next week and I want the book to coordinate with that event as closely as possible. If I could have it my way, the book would be available for order 1/1/11. What a prophetic date!

Paradigm Shift has never been intended to be the story of Sarah Palin. She just happens to have elbowed her way into its spotlight. As with all my Nonfiction in a Fictional Style books, Paradigm Shift is a story told from a psychosocial viewpoint. None of my books are exactly what you might expect, and this one is no exception. I have stood my ground as a rill American and a progressive, liberal, white Southerner all my life. This is the story of how I have felt surrounded by authoritarian buttheads who never seem to find their way out of Kansas. Why have they chosen to be angry for the full extent of their lives? I do not know; however, I fully understand the forces controlling their minds, and this is the story of those forces and how they have operated since America was born, and particularly over the past forty years.

What is The Palin Matrix? You could define it in many different ways, all of which boil down to a madness that has infected the political lives of many Americans. You cannot see it or hear it or feel it with your hands, but you can certainly see its brainwashing effects on cable news, hear it discussed infinitely on talk radio, and feel it as you walk among the masses from the other side. America cannot heal its economic divide until we stop fighting The Second Civil War. The specific problem is that the other side has become so vehemently rabid that we cannot ignore the bully and hope he will just go away. We must defend the compassionate America we all know and love before it ceases to exist.

The Palin Matrix

Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix has been sent to the publisher. The book should be available for the first pre-orders in about ten days to two weeks. The final price and page count is $17.95 and 382 pages. I managed to shrink the font one size and get it down below 400 pages. The reason for this was to try to get the retail price for its 212,000 words down as low as possible for readers in this tough economy. The book is quite an emotional roller coaster ride, with tall peaks of parody and hyperbole and fast downhill drops into Depression 2.0 and the crashing of the American Empire. The book's progress through the publishing system will be monitored on this site. I am quite proud of my magnum opus, although I am also psychologically exhausted. The poignancy of wrapping up such a project on Christmas Eve has not been lost on me. Paradigm Shift is a book for real Christians, not those holier-than-thou pretenders who go to church to be encouraged to vote Republican en masse while they economically crucify those who are less fortunate or different than themselves. Paradigm Shift may be a relentless humorous rant, but it is also a serious manifesto for those Americans who are the true followers of Jesus and the Christian religion, with sincere compassion for their fellow man. Merry Christmas, Sarah. This is my lump of coal gift to you.

Unleash the Tiger!

My baby tiger is about ready to be unleashed on schedule. The cover is complete, the final proofread has been done, and I am adjusting the last few details. I expect to send it to the publisher before Christmas. The first copies will be available early next month. Although the media, the economy, and The Big Picture of how America got itself into this mess, and how it will get out, are the overall focus of the book, probably 70% of the content is about Sarah Palin in one way or another.

PARADIGM SHIFT: The Palin Matrix (The Progressive Left Strikes Back!) is struggling at its leash! Here is a preview of the back cover blurb:

Timeline for a Psychotic Nation

Paradigm Shift is the story of the rise and fall of the American Empire as viewed within a psychosocial context. The timeline displays the development of the consumer culture and its economic vulnerabilities. After eight years of Bush and Cheney, we were almost ready to turn our Titanic around before it hit the iceberg. An unscrupulous celebrity politician with a wiggle, a wink, and an ice-cold heart has become our own American iceberg from Wasilla, AK.

These are the rumors and legends about the life and political career of Sarah Palin that the mainstream media do not want you to read or hear. She has become the gravy train for Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, The Discovery Channel, and many others. It is way past time to kick Sarah Palin and the media train she rode in on right in the caboose!

This is the book for all the many frustrated left wing progressives in America, those who have watched helplessly as our nation has been overtaken by greedy corporatist politicians, Wall Street scumbags, Tea Baggers, and power-mad Evangelical Christians. For all those who are as mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore, this book is for you!

Apocalypse Now!

Life in the Fish Bowl

As promised last week, here is an update on the progress of Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix. The 7 x 10 book will be approximately 400 pages and 210,000 words, and it should be released on schedule in about the first week of January 2011. The subtitle is The Progressive Left Strikes Back!

The Table of Contents will read as follows (with a brief description of each chapter added below):

Chapter 1: Timeline for a Psychotic Nation - The whole first chapter is composed entirely of a timeline of American history, similar to some of the material in my earlier book, Timeline of America. In many ways, Paradigm Shift has always been planned as a sequel to the 2006 book. As you read through the timeline in the earlier book, you will wax nostalgic, but this one will be disturbing in a manner that will make you wonder why no one seemed to see the obvious coming.

Chapter 2: The Swing of the Pendulum - This chapter contains a lot of the material from the '90's that had to be edited down from a massive level. As things worked out, this material had to be severely cut and updated to leave room for the nightmares that would soon follow.

Chapter 3: The 2008 Presidential Election Primaries - Only a couple of months ago, you may have wondered why this short chapter has been included, but with the political events of the past weeks, that question has unfortunately been answered.

Chapter 4: Babygate - You can skip this chapter, since there is nothing new in it for you experienced researchers of this volatile issue, but I am sure the newbies will be fascinated!

Chapter 5: The Psychology of a Nation - I have often mentioned that Paradigm Shift would also be a sequel to my 2002 book, The Last Horizon, and the details of this concept are spelled out in this chapter.

Chapter 6: Highways to Oblivion - I know most of you women are going to take one browse through all this discussion of cars, motorcycles, engines, and the history of these industries in America, and want to skip this chapter altogether. All I can say is that if you do, you will be missing a key element of how our country got itself into such a mess that a boob like Sarah Palin could take over our TV sets!

Chapter 7: Race to the Bottom of the World - This chapter covers many of the economic and environmental issues aside from those involving the auto industry.

Chapter 8: Suck the Boob - This is a title that can mean whatever you like. It generally refers to how our political system came to be so stupid.

Chapter 9: The Wolf Pack Trifecta - This is a serious chapter about the GOP, the Evangelical voting bloc, and the media.

Chapter 10: The Palin Matrix Stalemate - I know you are all wondering exactly what I mean by the phrase The Palin Matrix. I am not sure that I fully understand it myself. The phrase represents many things that you cannot see or touch, but you can sense their presence and feel their effects. It is a rot emanating from deep within the American psyche. It is why the right wingers seem to be angry at all of us and the rest of the world. It is the monster that has been unleased on America by Sarah Palin.

Paradigm Shift

My magnum opus Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix will be released within the first two weeks of 2011. This is the book I began in 1990 that has passed through several titles and permutations on its long journey to publication. Although the book began twenty years ago on the subject of the economic collapse of the American Empire, someone from Wasilla AK crashed the party back in '08 and none of us has been the same since. The subtitle is The Progressive Left Strikes Back!

At its longest, the original manuscript comprised well over 253,000 words. I am near the end of the editing process and I expect the final page count to be about 400 in an oversize 7 x 10 format. In other words, Paradigm Shift will be physically quite similar to my most recent book, Ker-Splash 2, which tops out at 400 pages and 152,000 words in a slightly larger font sharing the page space with many photos. The final word count of Paradigm Shift will surely be more than 200.000. I am shooting for a published release date as soon after 1/1/11 as possible. Whatever the final release date, the book should be available from Amazon a week or two later, followed by the Kindle version in probably no more than two more months, and then a Smashwords (Nook) version will be offered at some point after that, probably no later than April.

As I have stated repeatedly in my books and on my blogs, I am not a journalist. Although Babygate has been given a complete chapter in the book and many of Sarah Palin's shenanigans another chapter, there is no silver bullet that is going to stop the political madness. As with all my writing, this book will be a complete psychoanalysis of a nation that has lost its mind, and that will be the central focus of the book. You will not be disappointed!

Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix

Dr. Al Past, an author friend of mine, best known for his Distant Cousin series of E.T.-like novels, took this photo of a cold front moving into South Texas last February 10. This photo inspired the title of my upcoming book to be named Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix. This photo will not be on the actual cover, but a similar one recommended to me by Dr. Past will be used; however, I do not wish to show that one until the actual book and its cover are released soon after the first of the year.

The subtitle of the book is The Progressive Left Strikes Back! Although I mentioned in an earlier description that the book would be at least 600 pages, I may release it in an oversized 7 x 10 format in order to display certain portions of the text in a little more attractive manner. In that case, the page count should be well over 400 pages, at the least. Either way, Paradigm Shift: The Palin Matrix will be a magnum opus of more than 210,000 words, and at least half the content, in one manner or another, will be about Sarah Palin and/or Babygate. The book will open with a timeline of how America developed the consumer culture from 1492 through the current economic disasters of 2010, and will close with a bibliography of books and blogs that cover the pertinent issues. Possibly in a week or so, I shall be ready to post the Table of Contents and/or promotional blurbs for the book. Thank you.