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Posted By admin on August 25, 2010
Hey, all!
Just heading back to the classroom in a few minutes. It’s been a great summer, if a too short one (ain’t that the way with any vacation?).
I’ve gotten feedback from a few of my Ideal Readers, and will be making a few more tweaks in the next few weeks, in between being Dad, Hubby, and Mr. McNichol, licensed teacher. 
Wel, off to work, then back home to play…sorta. 
God bless, everyone!
JDM
Posted By admin on July 20, 2010
Well, on July 16th, it happened, folks! Yep, I turned the big Four-oh!
I still remember the night I turned 20- Shouting “I’m *old*, Sean! I’m *old!* to my buddy, Sean McClean, on the streets of Toronto at midnight as my teens ended.
I also remember being on a bus on the way back to Kentucky from visiting family as my 20s ended.
And, as my 30s ended, I . . . spent a relaxing day with my wife, Jeanna, and our 7 kids. We have four b-days and our anneversary in July, so it’s a very busy month for us (boy, am I glad at imes like this that I’m a teacher!)
I’m having a great time putting the polish on Emperor, catching plot holes and facepalming myself less and less as the holes get smaller and less numerous/embarrassing. Here’s hoping that by the end of July…
And I’m really, really glad that a few more folks have asked for copies of The King’s Gambit. To the wonderful folks who have copies already: feedback *is* appreciated! Even if it is negative, all it can do is make the story stronger! Really!
Off to sleep again. If you’re on Facebook like about 500 Billion people these days, drop by and “Like” my page there: John Coleman McNichol, Author. [Thanks go out to Dani Barker for putting the wonderful thing together! You rock, Dani!]
God bless,
John McNichol
Posted By admin on July 14, 2010
…but doing well! Got back a little bit ago with three of the kiddies, and still feeding the ever-present “Honey-Do” list (current project: Pressure washing the side of the house. (”Didn’t we just do this a two years ago, Jeanna?”;))
…And my other project ivolves slaying the evil cold virus, which has taken up residence in me since last Saturday and become The Thing That Would Not Leave.
…read a recent review of ‘Tripods’ which couldn’t but make me chuckle. If I read the reviewer right (and he/she didn’t make it easy…), they didn’t even read Tripods all the way through before dumping on it. Oh, well! Welcome to America.
Still, I have heard one question occationally that the aforementioned ‘reviewer’ echoed as part of their venomous tirade: Why did I ‘make’ the character of Herb such a devout racist?
The character of Herb *is* based on HG Wells, who *did* hold quite virulently racist beliefs at different levels of intensity during his lifetime. Consider this little rant:
“And how will the new republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black? how will it deal with the yellow man? how will it tackle that alleged termite in the civilized woodwork, the Jew? Certainly not as races at all. It will aim to establish, and it will at last, though probably only after a second century has passed, establish a world state with a common language and a common rule. All over the world its roads, its standards, its laws, and its apparatus of control will run. It will, I have said, make the multiplication of those who fall behind a certain standard of social efficiency unpleasant and difficult… The Jew will probably lose much of his particularism, intermarry with Gentiles, and cease to be a physically distinct element in human affairs in a century or so. But much of his moral tradition will, I hope, never die. … And for the rest, those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great world of the future, it is their portion to die out and disappear. The world has a greater purpose than happiness; our lives are to serve God’s purpose, and that purpose aims not at man as an end, but works through him to greater issues.”
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901), The Faith, Morals, and Public Policy of The New Republic, p. 340 - 343
“The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji.”
A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3
…did he change his views? Possibly. I’m certain there exists a Wells-ian apologist out there who is willing to make that case whether or not facts exist to support it. Still, Eugenics/Racism of the sort spouted by Wells was a belief held by virtually the entire intelligensia (smart-peopled class) of Wells’ day. Virtually the only person to challenge Eugenics as evil was a prolific, Christian writer named…(you guessed it) Gilbert Keith Chesterton.
Off to sleep…
Posted By admin on July 10, 2010
Having a great vacation with three of the munchkins-seeing Mom, Dad, Aunt, Uncle, Cousins and everyone else!
Still editing, hope to have it done and out to my Ideal Readers for some heartless rending and editing suggestions by the end of July (Cross fingers, Prayer to St. Francis De Sales!)!
The editing process can be a lot of fun at times, esp. when I catch mistakes before anybody else!
God bless,
John
Posted By admin on June 30, 2010
THANK YOU, GOD! 2ND DRAFT DONE! 11:35 pm, PST, the 2nd draft of The Emperor of North America was finished! Yay! Now, 1) Polish, hopefully a week or two, 2)send out copies to Ideal Readers for feedback, then…3) Off to the good folks at Sophia! Yessssss!
Posted By admin on June 16, 2010
Hey, folks. Well, another school year has come and gone. June already! 2nd *half* of June! Yipes! It’s been too long since I’ve posted, once again. When I have to go hunting in my hotmail account for my admin password, I know it’s been too long. Let’s see if I can keep up during the summer, when teacher’s recharge their batteries. Last Friday I had a wonderful honor. While I haven’t been pushing a secondary career on the lecture circuit (having a f/t gig and 7 kids does that to me, it seems…), I was asked last Friday to speak at the Homeschooler’s High School graduation ceremony at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Portland, Oregon.
I’m waiting for some of the pics from the event to come my way, but the hostess/organizer, Dorothy Gill, did an amazing job and kept everything clicking along. Seeing the grads, a number of whom had been HS’d their whole lives, really went a long way to dispelling the myths you hear about HSers being socially inept or otherwise weird. These were normal, well-adjusted high school kids. If anything, they were more mature than the average HS grad, and so easy to talk to that I was willing to forget that a number of them were on their way to Thomas Aquinas College in California… (TAC is something of a friendly rival to my Alma Mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville. More on that another day).
That being said, I am getting closer each day to finishing The Emperor of North America, the sequel to The Tripods Attack and the second in the Young Chesterton Chronicles trilogy.
And, yes, I am still planning it as a trilogy. I finished a novella a little while back titled “The King’s Gambit” which I’m still rather fond of.
Oh, and please comment on my posts, folks. I’m getting tired of the viagra ads and the Russian-based spam that keeps trying to sneak in under my radar.
God bless, and begin enjoying the summer!
JDM
Posted By admin on March 17, 2010
Well, the editing continues! Nearly 3/4 of the way, while I keep other projects rolling as well. Maybe I’ll try dropping pieces over to Realms of Fantasy, once I get my two more recent pieces in good enough shape. Anyone know any good book agents?
I am a little bummed, though. Due to family obligations, I’ll have to beg off seeing my favorite indy-band, The Red Elvises tonight as they roll through Portland. <:(
I’ll also only be able to run one game at the local gaming convention, Gamestorm, this time instead of my usual 3. Durn it, I’ll lose the free membership for next year…maybe they’ll roll it over when I paid without needing to a coupla years back….
Still I’ll be running a steampunk -themed game called Victoriana, a cleaned-up version, which will allow me to re-tell the story of the Empire Strikes Back in a steampunk theme, as I did with Star Wars / Steam Wars last year. Fun stuff! 
Well, all worth it for the sake of my wife, fam, folks who will be visiting, and little Claire.
Now, leave comments, but a copy of my book from Sophia, and contribute to the discussion points over on the Sophia Institute Press FB group.
Posted By admin on March 7, 2010
“Murder Your Darlings!”
I heard that was given as advice by one author to an up-and-commer regarding the editing process.
I learned much when Writing Tripods, enough to know that, as Stephen King says, “The Editor is (nearly) always right!”
Today I hacked out a sequence I really enjoyed, but that truly added little or nothing to the story. I have it backed up in case, but still…
In Tripods, I learned that chopping out a seqence, however much I enjoy it, is often a neccessary thing to do.
Sometimes, chopping out scenes where the character of Herb tried to ingratiate himself with a gang of NYC cutthroats, or the rioting of an angry mob of Luddites (as was in the first two drafts of Tripods), or the killing off of a major character (who lived through the first THREE drafts of Tipods…owitch….) is neccessary for the betterment of the story, however much the wandering tangent might be for the author.
Without getting too theological, I’ve seen more than one parallel to authorship and the journey of the soul.
Just as we write a first draft and begin editing it, we live each day as a 1st draft on a fresh, newly minted page.
Editing comes from self-reflection, hopefully during mass, the Rosary, spiritual exercises or retreats or other venues.
And, ultimately, we need the help of ‘editors,’ in the form of spiritual directors, close friends who are wehre we want to be, or others who are unafraid to tell us what they see and what needs to be changed.
My 2 cents…and hopefully as touchy-feely as I’ll get on this blog for a while.
If you’re on Facebook, drop by my publisher at Sophia Institute Press! I get to run the discussion board next week (fools! fools! Mwuhahahahahaha! ;))
Seriously, they’ve got a good thing started…hate to see it die out ’cause I’m the only person with a mouth big enough to keep flappin’!
God bless,
John McNichol
Posted By admin on February 28, 2010
Hey, all!
Little Claire is still a doll- an occasionally screaming, angry, stinky doll, but when she’s sweet we have no trouble forgetting all that!
My normal routine is to be up at 5am [I can hear those who lived through four years of Frnaciscan U of Steubenville with me already: "...*you*, John? 5AM? s'hya, right!"], do a half-hour walk-jog, then enjoy some silence to either write my latest project or edit Emperor.
But lately Claire’s tendency to sqwak and /or shreik until midnight or 1am has made it rather difficult to keep that pace.
So, for the first time since school started this year, on Thursday and Friday of this past week I slept in until 6am, and only spent my time getting ready for work.
Got a little note in my hotmail box this week, too. It seems that my amazing publisher, Sophia Press, now has their own page on Facebook! If you have a Facebook account, jump over, do a search for it and become a fan by clicking the appropriately named “Become a fan” button on the site. I’ll be running the discussions the week of March 8th, so any ideads for topics are welcome.
God bless,
JDM
Posted By admin on February 22, 2010
Hey, all! Well, our littlest one and our 2nd littlest have been tag-teaming it while I hack through the 2nd draft of The Young Chesterton Chronicles, Volume II: The Emperor of North America.
I am taking a bit of a break from writing itself, Claire being like most babies in that she is capable of sucking the un-tiredness from grownups around her.
I am now 2/3 of the way through completing the sequel, and will be giving a fair bit of credit to that to a couple of wonderful folks who have acted as enthusiastic consultants when I’ve needed advice on topics ranging from the real-life name of Gilbert’s brother-in-law to how to burn a sword wound closed.
Yes, good stuff. Makes me want to get my doctorate. Or maybe hit med school.
Anyway, to those who are still reading here, thank you & keep dropping those comments! Every day I get spam jokes and ads for Viagra and similar products begging for approval, & I’m getting a little cranky at them. >:P
God bless, and please keep my book in your prayers, that I do a good job that leads others to truth.
