One of the best tricks for building fantasy worlds is to start with real history. Tolkien did it. George R.R. Martin did it. I do it too. In The Drovers, I draw, in part, on the cultures around the Black Sea.
This is why I read a lot of “daily life” books. And I found one that is unlike anything else I’ve read.
It’s called 24 Hours in Ancient Rome by Philip Matyszak.
Instead of dry lists of facts, it gives you twenty-four stories — one for each hour of the day — told through the eyes of Romans: a watchman, a baker, a carter, a senator, a slave girl, a mother with a sick child, and plenty more.
Each short chapter drops you right into their lives. I couldn’t put it down. By the end, I felt like I’d actually walked the streets of Rome. And I kept telling my family, “Did you know this? Did you know that?”
If you love history, or if you’ve ever wondered what daily life in Rome really felt like, I think you’ll enjoy this one.
A big thanks to those who responded to the last email with castle recommendations: John E, John D, Nikki, Tom, and Robert. Skipton, Bamburgh, Mad King Ludwig’s places, Carnarvon, Carcassonne, and many more, including some in Japan if I ever get over there. I now have a terrific list, and want to visit as many of these as I can.
And thanks to those who sent me their first names and told me how much they enjoy the books. (We luvs to hear that, Precious.)
I will also say this: there are some fascinating people on this newsletter list. Of course, when I sit down with anyone, I find they’re fascinating in their own way. I’m honored to have you here.
Here’s to books that make the past feel like an adventure—and the present feel richer for it.
If you want to understand the secret to Mormonism, something 99.9% of the world does not know, even though many think they do, read on.
This last Tuesday I was at dinner with a number of wonderful coworkers. We were talking about religion and listening to the guy who helps set up our training environments talk about the interesting hunting ministry he’s involved with (it’s very cool—12,000 acres of woodland in Alabama all dedicated to hunting, outdoor survival, and God).
At one point in the conversation, a delightful fellow trainer, who shared with us the night before the definition of diplomacy as being able to tell someone to go to hell and have them look forward to the trip, asked me, “Does your church believe in Christ. Or, no, is it some other fellow?”
It’s a great question, and I realized that many people are confused. And so I wanted to take time to clear it up.
So what the heck is a Mormon?
It’s not what you think.
And for those of you who think you know, nope, it’s not about that book.
Let me explain. You’ll come away knowing more about us than anyone in any of your circles, and you can lord your superior knowledge over them at dinner parties, when playing games that require vast stores of smarts, or at random moments, just because you can.
Here’s the deal. The first part of the name of the church is “The Church of Jesus Christ.” So, yes, we believe in Christ, that he died for us, was resurrected, is our Lord and god, etc.
The last part of the name is “of latter-day saints.” We don’t use “saint” to mean super-holy people like the Catholic church does, but more as followers or disciples. So you could translate the last part of the name of our church as “of latter-day followers.”
So the whole name would be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day People who Follow Him.
Okay, then what’s the deal with the name “Mormon”?
Well, here’s where we get to the nub of it and the thing that 99.9% of the world doesn’t know. The key difference between the Mormon church and other Christian churches is that we believe that Jesus has called apostles again in our day, just like he did back in the good old days. And when I say apostles, I mean guys like Peter, James, John, Paul, etc.
You might be wondering what an apostle is. What made those guys special?
It wasn’t that they had great faith in Jesus. Lots of people had great faith. It was that they were called to bear special witness of him. And that special witness was not merely that they believed, but that they knew Jesus was the Messiah because they had seen and heard him after his resurrection.
Peter himself said it best when he wrote in his letter, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
When the apostles had to choose someone to replace Judas, Peter said, “Wherefore of these men which have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John unto that same day that he was taken up from us, one must be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.”
These guys didn’t simply believe. They knew. They were eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus wasn’t just some preacher—he was the son of God and was resurrected.
So Mormons believe that Jesus has called apostles again today who bear witness of an absolute certain knowledge of the reality of Jesus the Christ. We believe their purpose is also to be the Lord’s spokesmen when He wants to make general announcements or give general instructions. Finally, we also believe they’ve received the authority to offer the covenants the Lord wants to make with all of us.
We believe the first apostle called in these latter days was a fellow by the name of Joseph Smith. We don’t worship Smith. He was just an apostle. Just like Matthew or John of old were. But we do believe the Lord called him to be an apostle and restore some truths that had gotten lost or confused over the years.
We also believe the Lord asked him to bring forth other scriptures in addition to those in the Bible. One of these new scriptures was a translation of an ancient record called The Book of Mormon. It’s called that because Mormon is the name of the guy who wrote it. And Mormon was another apostle—one called by Jesus in ancient America.
And guess what the purpose of The Book of Mormon is? It’s to testify of Jesus Christ and explain his gospel.
So the name of the Mormon church is really The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons believe that Jesus has called and commissioned apostles in our times, right up to today, to bear special witness of him. And in addition to that, those apostles have brought forth additional scriptures that witness of the divinity and mission of Jesus Christ.
For Mormons, it’s all about Jesus Christ.
So when someone asks, what’s a Mormon? You can say, let me tell you the real answer. It’s not about an additional book of scripture. Yes, folks gave them the nickname of Mormons because of that book, but the key difference is that Mormons believe that Jesus has called apostles like Peter and Paul again in our day to be his spokesmen, and bear a certain witness of him and his good news, and help folks receive all the blessings the Lord wants to pour out on them.
And, O, what a wonderful message we Mormons believe that is.
Habits are one of the most powerful forces in our lives. If
we could consciously harness them, there’s no telling what we can do.
The problem is that we keep going about it all wrong.
We keep trying to motivate ourselves into behavior change.
Sometimes motivation works, but motivation is fickle. And more often than not
it leaves us hanging just when we need it the most.
So are we doomed?
No.
Because motivation is just one of four parts of creating
habits. And it’s not even the most important one.
What are these other parts? How do you harness them?
Well, that’s the subject of Atomic Habits by James Clear.
And one of the neat things is that Clear reveals that tiny
changes can lead to remarkable results. No Herculean efforts. No getting
yourself amped up. Something else that’s much easier to do and much more
effective.
The book’s been a New York Times bestseller.
An Amazon bestseller.
It’s been on the USA Today bestseller list for twenty-two
weeks.
If you want to build some good habits, if you want to stop
some bad ones, if you want to make any behavior in yourself or others more
likely, let me recommend you find out what Clear has discovered in his research
and give it a try. I think you’ll be happy you did.
*
Chris Christie,
the two-term governor of New Jersey, is an interesting figure.
He was a federal prosecutor who cleaned up a ton of
government corruption in New Jersey.
And then he became governor. He might have come and gone
like hundreds of governors, but a video went viral, showing his direct, in-your-face
politics.
Many begged him to run in the 2012 presidential election,
including a whole bunch of billionaires.
He turned them down. Said he wasn’t ready. You’ve got to
admire someone who does that.
Then he did run in the 2016 election, but failed to get the
attention and votes he might have because Trump was sucking all the media out
of the room. And that might have ended it. But Christie dropped out of the race
and was the first to endorse Trump, who’d been a long-time friend.
Trump almost picked him for vice president. The choice ended
up being between Christie and Pence. Ultimately, he chose Pence and asked Christie
to create the transition plan.
Christie spent six months with a whole team of people
creating that plan. It was a plan that would have helped Trump avoid so many
disasters in appointments and policy during his first two hundred days. But
when it was finished, the Trump team decided to throw it away.
Why? What was going on?
Christie is unlike Trump in many, many ways. Why would he
support him?
Christie reveals all and much more in Let Me Finish: Trump, the
Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics.
In the book he sets the record straight about his tenure as
a corruption-fighting prosecutor and a Republican running a Democratic state,
as well as what really happened on the 2016 campaign trail and inside Trump
Tower. It’s a fascinating book that gives insights into the Trump team, Trump
himself, and Christ Christie who I think would have made a terrific president.
If you’re interested in politics, larger-than-life figures,
and a view from the inside, I think you’ll love this book.
*
In less than three minutes, you can amaze your friends, cut
through a lot of political blather, and clearly assess what’s being proposed
over the next eighteen months as the presidential campaign heats up.
How?
By understanding the simple taxonomy below.
Every day folks in the media make accusations and claims
about socialism, Sweden, Venezuela, capitalism, and the United States. Unfortunately,
a lot of the time it’s clear they’re a bit muddled. So let’s cut through the
confusion.
Whether you’re an independent, Democrat, or Republican,
you’ll want to know these three terms.
SOCIALISM
The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The
government in these schemes is the old-fashioned Soviet, Mao, and Nazi style
dictatorships.
These types of socialists did so much good in the 20th
century. No other scheme was better at piling up dead bodies. Millions and
millions of them.
An interesting tidbit. Did you know that “Nazi” is the abbreviation
in German of “Nationalsozialistische”? That word means
“National Socialist”. It comes from the name of Hitler’s political party, the “National
Socialist German Workers’ Party” or “Nationalsozialistische der Deutsche
Arbeiters Partei.”
Nobody running for president today is advocating for this
type of government.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
The state owns and directs huge portions of the economy. The
government in these schemes is supposed to be democratic, which means you
should be able to vote the bums out and put other bums in. Venezuela supposedly
uses this model, although some wonder if it is a true democracy or a sham one.
For those who like socialism, this is supposed to be the
good way of doing it as opposed to the bad way of the old fashioned
authoritarians. I will let you determine whether the “good” scheme actually
leads to any better economic outcomes than the “bad” one.
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
You rely on lots and lots and lots of capitalism (private
ownership and direction of companies in a free market) to fund government
social programs. The funding is done via high tax rates. You have elections and
can vote the bums out and put other bums in. This is Sweden.
A lot of people in the current presidential race are
advocating for this type of government. Although, if they say that any system
that allows billionaires to exist is immoral, you will need to scrutinize that
candidate carefully because Sweden’s system allows billionaires. It may be that
candidate actually wants some form of democratic socialism.
One last point. If you think about it, the United States and
Sweden are similar types of governments. They’re on the same continuum. The difference
is that the United States is simply much less of a welfare state than Sweden
is.
There you have it. Three terms you are going to hear a
million times over the next eighteen months.
Amaze your friends by actually knowing what they mean.
I just finished Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire by Bret Baier. It’s a New York Times bestseller that takes you into the world of Ronald Reagan, his rise to power in politics, and his role in ending the Cold War. And it does in a personable way with gentle humor throughout.
I enjoyed the fascinating behind-the-scene insights about the personalities involved and the clarity about what really happened. And how the book brings Reagan to life, as if he’s almost there. Along the way you’ll also get insight into Mikhail Gorbachev, the assassination attempt on Reagan, and more.
Baier is the chief political anchor for Fox News. In 2001, he became the station’s chief Pentagon correspondent and ended up traveling to Afghanistan 11 times and Iraq 13 times. In 2007, he became the station’s chief correspondent to the White House. More importantly, Baier seems to be one of the few journalists these days who is simply trying to get and report facts instead of spin. And that’s exactly what he’s done here.
If you like biographies or history, if you want to know how the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. stepped back from decades of mutually assured destruction, if you want to get a view into how diplomacy is done, then I think you’ll love this book. And you’ll probably love it even more if you can listen to the audio book version, read by Baier himself, which also includes a recording of Reagan’s speech to the students at Moscow State University. I listened to it via the Overdrive account my public library provides. Baier’s reading was terrific.
“More than 50% of all traditionally-published book sales of any format in the US now happen on Amazon.com.”
That’s just amazing. But I found something even more amazing this week.
Author Earnings released a report this week of their analysis of a million titles on Amazon. Data Guy, the tech guy behind the software gathering the information and crunching it, posted this graph in the comments.
Do you see the amazing thing?
Well of course you do, I gave it away in the title of the blog. Science fiction and fantasy sell MORE units than thrillers.
More.
What?!
For, like, ever I thought SFF was a tiny portion of the market. Not so, my friends.
Some may say, well, but this only represents Amazon. What about the channels traditional publishers sell through? Author Earnings explains a way to account for that in their report. Basically just double the size of the purple and red bars. If you do that I think thrillers might just edge SFF out. But it doesn’t dwarf it by any means.
Furthermore, for an indie author, I don’t worry about those other channels because they’re not really a viable option for me. My world is selling online. And the online market for SFF is the SECOND BIGGEST MARKET after Queen Romance.
Oh, BTW, next book in the queue is volume 1 of Lord of Bones. It’s going to start with something like this.
The four men did not leave. Instead, they spread out just a bit in shallow semi-circle in front of Blaze.
Four of them. One of him. There was definitely going to be blood.
“You don’t want to do this,” Blaze said.
The big one drew his sword and swung it a bit to loosen his shoulders. “Oh, but we do. Because you’re not handing over the blackmeal. And we’re not leaving without it.”
No, he was not going to hand that over. Couldn’t. Not if he valued the lives of his wife and boy.
Two of the others drew their swords. The fourth brought his staff up and laid it on his shoulder in a two-handed grip.
The big one would be the obvious target to take first. But Blaze knew that would be a mistake. The big one was there just to focus his attention. To fix Blaze in place. And then the silent one would slice him up the side.
The man with the skinny face said, “Old man, the vultures will be picking your eyes out before lunch.”
Blaze said, “Well, if you’re so determined, let’s not keep them waiting.” And then he rocked forward.
I’ve not forgotten the Dark God series. I will finish it, but I need to get this smaller volume of Lord of Bones out.
“Mandate” is one of the stupidest words used in politics today.
A mandate is an order, a command from the boss. A requirement.
Some restaurant owners mandate their employees wash their hands after using the bathroom. I personally like restaurant owners who mandate that.
States mandate that people who drive cars have car insurance. I like that mandate as well.
But do political representatives receive mandates?
When a politician wins an election, does he or she receive a mandate from the people?
For example, when Obama spanked John McCain in 2008, and the Democrats swept into power, did they have a mandate from the American people to enact certain legislation?
Obama had 52.9% of the voters behind him. McCain had 45.7% of them.
Many Democrats at the time claimed a mandate from “the American people.” But if you know some elementary school maths, you’ll quickly recognize that 52.9% is nowhere close to 100%. Or 90%. Or even 70%.
52.9% is close to, well, 50%. That’s half. As in half a pizza. Here’s a visual for the maths-impaired.
Clearly, 52.9% is nowhere close to “the American people” or “voters.”
But this was lost on politicians who had the brain capacities of gerbils. They thought the elections magically evaporated the will of 45.7% of the people. They though the other half had suddenly disappeared. They thought government by and for the people meant government by and for half the people.
Hold on, John. In the Senate, Democrats won 57 seats, Republicans 41. In the House it was 257 to 178, or 59% to 41%.
Yeah, like I said. About half.
But such maths were beyond them. And so they began to push through legislation that only half the country wanted. Sometimes much less than half, as in the case of Obamacare.
They weren’t governing America. They weren’t leading America. They were leading half and oppressing the other half because they had “won the election.”
So, my fellow Americans, should winning an election give you the right to force something onto the other half of the populace they don’t want?
Is this what America is all about? Is that the freedom from tyranny we celebrate every fourth of July?
The Republicans won a great victory in this year’s election, taking back the Senate and expanding their seats in the House. In the Senate, it will probably be 53 to 45. In the House, 244 to 184.
But does this mean the American people have clearly given them a mandate to enact certain legislation? Does it mean they’re supposed to ignore the other half of the country and ram legislation down their throats they don’t agree with?
I’m a true blue conservative. Or true red, or whatever the color is. After the last six years, I never want to have legislation rammed down my throat again. And I’ve also come to the realization that I never want to do that to the other guy.
America hasn’t given the Republicans a mandate. Nor, as President Obama recently claimed, have they given Washington a mandate to “get stuff done.”
Getting stuff done is exactly the problem.
We don’t want you to get stuff done.
We want you to get stuff done that the vast majority of us agree on!
But, John, does that mean you want us to compromise on our principles?
No. I don’t want to compromise. I’m not interested in going along to get along. But I’m also not interested in a representative government that fails to represent HALF of us.
Here’s my proposal. Let’s go back and start over.
Let’s get rid of Obamacare and put something in its place that at least 60-65% of us can agree on. Maybe 70% of us. It won’t be a liberal weed dream. It won’t be a right wing vision of glory. But whatever gets enacted will be something all of us agree are good things.
And it will force us to win others to our way of thinking if we want to get the rest of the stuff we think is so splendid.
But, John, what if folks can’t agree?
Then we don’t enact. This forces us to use persuasion. It forces is to think win-win. It forces us to behave like a nation that loves freedom.
Immigration. Do we want an American where the president acts like a tyrant and forces something down half of our throats? Or do we want to enact something 65-70% of us can agree on?
The budget. Let’s roll back all the nonsense and get a spending plan that 65-70% of us can agree on.
What about the 30%? I don’t want to oppress them, but 100% ain’t never gonna happen. Let’s be practical. Besides, requiring a large majority means Washington will be at least by and for most of the people. And that’s better than what we have today.
So, do we have a mandate? If anything, I would hope the mandate would be to do stuff that represents America, not one party.
Edit 11/10/2014
And today I find this–an explicit example of the gerbil-brain thinking I reference above. This fine fellow is one of the architects of Obamacare, explaining that the law was written in a way to bamboozle the American voter. What we need in Washington is honest debate and persuasion. Not duplicity and lies. I’m appalled. This is the get-stuff-done-I-have-a-mandate mentality. Not the get stuff done that most of us agree on approach. These folks have completely misunderstood the purpose of government.
For a number of reasons, the belief here is that most of the time for most authors who can get a deal with an established and competent house, their best choice is to take it.
Sounds reasonable, but then we get to the money quotes.
The strength of the traditional publishers and the traditional deals is directly related to the amount of the market that is served by inventory in stores. When that proportion was “nearly all”, the power allocation was “nearly all” to the traditional publishers.
***
Self-publishing and new-style digital-first publishing can grow more to the extent that the book-in-store share of the market shrinks more. But while that’s happening, the big publishers are also adding to their capabilities: building their databases and understanding of individual consumers (something that all the big houses are doing and which the upstarts seem not to believe is happening, or at least not happening effectively), distributing and marketing with increasing effectiveness in offshore markets, and controlling more and more of the global delivery in all languages of the books in which they invest.
It will compound the pressure on the alternative players if Amazon continues to grow its global market share for ebooks. The bigger the percentage of the market that can be reached by self-publishers with one stop at Amazon, the less interest they’ll have in picking up smaller chunks of the market with additional deals and the more powerful will be any incentives Amazon cares to offer for making the title exclusive to them.
Shatzkin’s discussion of the amount of the market served by inventory in stores is right on. But his “best choice” conclusion doesn’t follow.
Why?
Because the question for each author has to be which stores will I be in, what kind of floor space will I have, and how long will I be there? And in many cases the answers to those questions do not compete well with indie options.
For example, a lot of in-store sales come from the drug store, grocery store, airport, Walmart, Costco type venues. But it’s rare than an author getting an average deal will see the light of day in those places. Those are reserved for bigger sellers. And not very many of those. So unless you’re getting a big deal, you can’t count that floor space.
Poof. Tens of thousands of venues are now no longer part of the equation.
So you are now left with whatever number of stores the publisher can get you into at Barnes&Noble (a max of 675 stores), Books-a-Million (max of 200 stores), Hastings (max of 149 stores), non-chain stores, etc. I think the total number of book stores in the USA is around 10,000 or so. But publishers won’t get you into all of them. Some don’t carry your type of book: they’re used books stores, or kids book stores, or Christian book stores. And even if it’s a store like Barnes&Noble, you probably won’t get into all their stores. So how many stores will you actually be in?
Next, you have to wonder where you’ll appear in the stores you do get into. Will you be face-out somewhere prominent? Or will you have two copies spine-out in the back? If you’re spine-out, that’s just reduced the value of the floor space publishers offer you yet again.
Finally, how long will you be there? If you sell your two copies in a store, are you done at that store? Will your books be there longer than 12 weeks? Will they be there even 8 weeks?
James Patterson can sell millions of books because he has multiple copies in tens of thousands of stores with great display. And he’s usually there for more than just a handful of weeks. If you have two books spine-out in each of 500 stores for eight weeks, how well are you going to do?
Here’s some math on author revenue and units sold. Is selling 1,000 books with the royalties and contract terms offered really worth it? What about 4,000 books? 7,000? Are you going to be in enough stores with a decent placement to get those numbers?
If you’re going to be in thousands and thousands of stores with good placement, and the terms of the contract are reasonable, then, good golly, working with a publisher looks great. But if you’ve got a book that’s good enough to make an editor somewhere want to buy rights to it and the publisher is offering to put you spine-out in a little over a thousand stores with all sorts of contract crap, then Shatzkin’s “best choice” is really a poor one. In those situations my money is on going indie.
